Secret Band of Brothers / A Full and True Exposition of All the Various Crimes, Villanies, and Misdeeds of This Powerful Organization in the United States.

by J. H. Green

I visited Wyatt four times, in company with Mr. Morrill, Chaplain of the Prison. The time I spent with him in all these visits was about five hours, during which we conversed about his former course of life. It is impossible for me to state in one article all that he revealed to me, but what I do remember, I published in my letters, relative to my visits to the cell of Wyatt. The second of these letters was dated April 7th, and the first about the 1st of April. I read both these letters to the reverend gentleman; the first before it went to press, and the second as soon as published, we being at both times together, with some officers of the institution, in the State Prison office.

I now call the attention of the reader to a letter, from the reverend gentleman, to the editor of the New York Tribune, of the date of April 7th, in which he speaks in the highest terms of my conduct. The reader will notice that this is after my first letter was published, and after he had heard them both read, and after he knew that I had given Wyatt's confessions, which he now, in his letter of July 25th, declares to be nothing more than "fabrications" of mine. If my statement of Wyatt's confession were known to Mr. Morrill to be false, why did he recommend me so highly in his letter of April 7th, and why has he not contradicted me before this? The reverend gentleman says, that he did not wish to injure me, and so addressed me a private note. If I could be so base as to put forth to the world such falsehoods as he accuses me of, in regard to a fellow-being, so soon to be launched into eternity, no fear of injury to me can excuse the gentleman for his not exposing me immediately to public scorn and detestation.

When at Auburn, after my visits to the cell, I spoke several times, in the presence of Mr. Morrill, and other gentlemen, of Wyatt's confessions to me; and yet Mr. Morrill, though present, never disputed one relation. I also lectured some fifty times, within fifty miles of Auburn, and, in nearly all, gave the same statements which he now contradicts. Why has not Mr. Morrill published, together with his contradiction, my reply to his note of July 10th? If he had, the community would have seen my reasons for not retracting my former statements.

I am truly sorry to have any difficulty with the reverend gentleman, on this subject or any other, but my duty in regard to this malicious slander, (the motives of which I am unable to fathom,) compels me to reply, and for no other purpose than to satisfy the community, that I could have no personal object in view, in casting a stigma upon the character of this unfortunate convict, by any statement he made to me, for I certainly could not be benefited in any manner by publishing falsehoods in relation to him.

I repeat again to the world, and ever will, that the unfortunate Wyatt did to me confess all I stated he did, and much more, which it is impossible for me to remember. If he stated falsehoods to me, I am not responsible. He told me that he was one of four that had received a thousand lashes at Vicksburg, in July, 1835; and I knew a young man, by the name of Henry North, to be about Vicksburg, and to be in the employment of North, the gambler, who was hung at Vicksburg, by the lynchers, in July, 1835. Henry, though of the same name, was not related to the other, as I understood. When I went to the south in the fall of 1835, I inquired about the gamblers of Vicksburg, and was told that Henry North, alias Wyatt, or Newell, was, with four others, whipped, tarred and feathered, hands bound, and set afloat, and the supposition was that he, and the others with him, existed no more. When Wyatt told me his real name, I was surprised at beholding him. He told me that he had set fire twice to Vicksburg, and once to Natchez, and that, during the conflagration, he murdered three men. He told me he killed Tucker in 1839. I talked with Mr. Morrill before several officers of the prison, in regard to what Wyatt said about cutting the entrails out of Tucker, and the confession which Mr. Morrill now has from Wyatt will show the main circumstances of this murder, perhaps not giving Tucker's name, but he speaks about the flat-boat murder, between Natchez and New Orleans, and I claim it, in justice to me, that the reverend gentleman should produce the confession Wyatt made, when he speaks of "speculation on the Mississippi."

I also call on Mr. Morrill, in justice to myself and the public, to answer the following questions. 1st. Did not Wyatt confess in his presence the murder of individuals besides Tucker, on the Mississippi? 2d. Did he not say he cut the entrails out to prevent their rising? 3d. Did he not say he was tried at St. Louis under another name, (I think it was North,) and did I not turn to Mr. Morrill, and say, I knew some men had been tried at St. Louis, but knew none of the parties; and did not Wyatt then say that he was tried for murder at St. Louis, that he was convicted on his first trial, but acquitted on a new trial, and that an innocent man was hung? 4th. Did I not tell Mr. Morrill, that Wyatt informed me that he had been a convict in the Ohio Penitentiary; and does not Mr. Morrill recollect that upon my third visit to Wyatt's cell, I said to Wyatt, that it was reported he had been in the Ohio Penitentiary, at which Wyatt frowned, and I changed the tenor of my question by stating, that Gordon said he (Wyatt) had been there, and that Wyatt laughed, and said it was such d—d lies which occasioned Gordon's death; and did not Mr. Morrill say to me, he knew many of Wyatt's misfortunes, which he kept secret from the agent of the prison; and will Mr. Merrill deny that when we went into the office, after my last visit, that the clerk again repeated that Wyatt had been in the Ohio Prison, and did not I then decide with the clerk, the probability of such being the fact, and did not Mr. Morrill still insist that it was a false report?

In conclusion I will say, that whatever may be the reverend gentleman's intentions towards me, and in his own behalf the motives for which I am not able to penetrate; yet, although he brands my statements as false, and although the cell was but four by seven feet in size, I leave it to the community to decide, whether two men, who can speak the "flash language," in which one word can convey sentences, may not hold a conversation not easily understood by a third person, ignorant of its meaning—and can Mr. Morrill assert what meaning was conveyed by such language between Wyatt and myself? if so, he is the first man I ever knew that could interpret a language or tongue he never studied. At least one-fourth of the conversation between Wyatt and myself before Mr. Morrill, was of this kind. I do not think Mr. Morrill understood all he heard, yet the greater part of what I published in my letters was spoken in plain English, and Mr. Morrill, at the time, gave vent to his feelings over the dreadful disclosures.

I ask the papers of the day to publish this statement in justice to both parties, as well as the public at large.

J. H. GREEN.