This letter came from the Herald, Times, and Tribune offices, and was the result of the deliberations of Bennett, Greeley, and Raymond, through their Secretaries, Hudson, Dana, and Tuthill. My heart was moved while reading this production. The genial spirits of Houston and Hamilton, of the Herald, and of the equally meritorious dead in the Times and Tribune establishments, passed before my vision, and I was unmanly, and wept like a delicate female. And with electric flights of the imagination, I grasped the long and happy years I have passed in the Herald, Times, and Tribune offices, in the pleasing effort to improve the Fire and Police Departments. I thought, too, of the noble band of intellectual living giants connected with the Metropolitan Press in question, and I wept to know that we would be less friendly, and that my form and intellect were never more to be reflected by the leading Press of America. And why must this be so? Why must I pass in silence, in my whole journey to the grave, such men as Bennett, Greeley, and Raymond, and their Secretaries, Hudson, Dana, and Tuthill? Is it because they have not noticed the Alligator? I would despise myself, if I could be governed by so mean a motive. A spark will light a flame that will defy a million men. Isolated snow will come silently from Heaven, and form mountains that will bury thousands. And I admit that after my gratuitous labors in the Herald, Times, and Tribune establishments for so many years, (in which I devoted the integrity and education that my father gave me,) the refusal of Bennett, Greeley, and Raymond to notice my feeble efforts to establish a truthful press, kindled a blaze in my bosom that they can never quench. For seven weeks I looked with solicitude for the mention of my Journal in their columns, and crushed to the earth with pain and disgust with my species, I resolved to dissect the bodies that were animated by such contracted souls. Their refusal to notice and encourage the efforts of an old and tried friend like me, (who has toiled so long and hard to give them important public documents and early valuable domestic and foreign intelligence,) aroused a million demons that have slumbered in my bosom, and yearned for years to expose the villainy of American editors, who hold the destinies of my country and of human liberty in their palms, and who trifle and play with the people, and sell them like cattle in the face of the morning sun. Bennett, Greeley, and Raymond never meet by daylight, but they do by night light in great emergencies. They fret and scold before the people, but they act in concert in subterranean caverns. And their Secretaries, Hudson, Dana, and Tuthill, daily walk arm-in-arm, plotting deeds of hell for their wicked masters, in which the people are invariably sold. And so with the money-article writers of these public journals. They see each other often, and act in concert, and spread terror in Wall street, and throughout the country, and desolate the hearth of many a happy domestic circle, in the journey of every sun. And shall I be silent, and go down to my grave, with these fatal secrets on my heart, that have depressed me for years? Shall I be recreant to my mission, and to the toiling millions, on whom their accursed treason falls? Shall I not tell the American people, that the evils and corruption that overshadow our land, and threaten to subvert our glorious institutions, have their source in the American Press? And shall I not adduce my proof and argument, and scathing analysis of their pernicious motives? And shall I be silenced by the threats in this letter, that I will be crushed by three Leviathans the instant I open my fatal batteries? No, no. All hell shall not deter me from my exposition of Bennett, Greeley, and Raymond, and their vile Secretaries. For my honor I care every thing, and he who strives to deprive me of it, through unmerited detraction, shall die by my avenging hand. But for life I care nothing, only to be useful to my kind, and to adhere to integrity, and serve the God of my supreme adoration. Life! Take it! Take the poor, trembling, pining, mortal trunk and scabbard, but beware of the sword and soul! Look, but touch not them, lest the ground rock, and open, and yawn, and swallow, and cut, and dash, and burn your demon bones and nerves through undying ages. Beware! I say! O beware! and tremble! For I have a superstition, that a soul is sacred in the eyes of God, according to its love of truth, or its hatred and horror of such hypocrites, thieves, and traitors, as Bennett, Greeley, and Raymond.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1857, by
STEPHEN H. BRANCH,
In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the United
States for the Southern District of New York.
Life of Stephen H. Branch.
The news of my return to Providence spread rapidly, and the political newspapers unfriendly to father most cruelly announced my arrival in blazing capitals. I then told my father that if he would furnish me the means, I would go to the sea shore, and he instantly complied. I departed for Boston with White, whose father resided in Pepperell, Massachusetts, whither he went, and I took the stage to Salem and Gloucester, near Cape Ann. When I parted with White, I was overwhelmed with tears and desolation. I passed the first night in Gloucester at a hotel, and the next day engaged private board. I now was very lonely,—had no congenial spirit by my side,—knew no one in Gloucester,—was a mere skeleton,—could not read nor compose, without suffusing my brain with blood, and I sometimes thought I should drop dead, and seriously contemplated self-destruction. But the ocean air revived me, and I gave lessons in penmanship to a Mr. Story and his two sons, who gave me $5 a week, which defrayed my expenses, and diverted my mind from the melancholy past, which was a precious solace. The summer closed, and the leaves began to fall, and the first blast of autumn made its advent from the north, and I returned to Boston, and went to New York by way of Hartford and New Haven. I engaged board with Mrs. Reeve, in Pearl street, near Franklin Square, and hired a cheap piano of Firth, Hall, & Pond, and gave English lessons to the son of Mr. Vultee, for which he imparted musical instruction. I then went to Arthur Tappan, and informed him that I contemplated the instruction of colored persons, who sent me to his brother, Lewis Tappan, with whom I had a long conversation, at his store in Pearl street, during which he examined my qualifications in spelling, reading, figures, and penmanship, and gave me a letter of introduction to a colored man named Van Ransselaer, who kept a restaurant under the office of the Journal of Commerce. I taught Mr. and Mrs. Van Ransselaer and their adopted boy for some weeks, for which I received my meals at their restaurant. They had a room in the sixth story of one of the Wall street buildings, and, in climbing the stairs, I often thought I should die before I reached the upper story. I now see an advertisement, and obtain a situation as teacher on the plantation of Mr. Bennett, near Franklin, Alabama, and departed for Apalachicola, in the brig Sampson, Captain Robinson. The passengers could scarcely move in consequence of the barrels of potatoes and apples on deck. We paid our passage in advance. The proprietors of the vessel allowed the captain a limited sum for sailors, and, to save a portion of the money for himself, the captain obtained most of his sailors from the hospital, from those just recovering from protracted illness. One was lame, and another had but one eye, and all were pale and extremely feeble. We had a gale off Cape Hatteras, and some of the more emaciated sailors were instantly prostrated, and retired to their berths, and the passengers had to work night and day, or go to the bottom of the ocean. In a week after I left New York, my hands were nearly raw with blisters from hauling ropes. The owners permitted the captain to provision the vessel as he pleased, and render his account to them at the close of the voyage, and he nearly starved us, although he charged the proprietors of the vessel for the best provisions the market afforded. I often caught the captain drinking wines and eating luxuries behind the masts, which the passengers should have had, and I denounced him, but to no purpose. I discovered the helmsman asleep at midnight, and the vessel going stern foremost, and aroused the passengers just in time to save all from a watery grave. There was a passenger who had been a skilful mariner, and we acted in concert, or we must have been lost. We watched the helmsman on alternate nights, but got weary of the task, and shared the toil with other passengers. I emerged from my berth at midnight, and found both passenger and helmsman asleep, when I aroused all hands to witness the extraordinary spectacle, and our common peril, and, after that, the passengers formed a Vigilance Committee to unceasingly watch the captain and sailors. In a week, land was discovered, although the captain assured us one hour before the discovery, that we were about one hundred miles from land. It was near sunset, and if we had not discovered land before dark, we would have gone ashore, and been drowned, or butchered by the hostile Indians on the coast of Florida, who were then engaged in their final struggle with the Americans. We had a hurricane soon afterwards, and lost all the apples and potatoes from the deck, but we at last arrived at Key West. We took in water, and some bread and herrings, and steered for Apalachicola, and on the following day, we took four men from a vessel that must have sunk in one hour after we rescued them. The poor fellows had been several days on the wreck, without food or water, and they shivered and cried like children, when they reached our vessel. It was a very affecting scene, and none could restrain their tears. We had a gale in the Gulf of Mexico, and expected to be lost, but we ultimately reached Apalachicola, which I found a perfect desert. My employer, and a wagon with two horses, anticipated my arrival, and we went to Saint Joseph, and thence up the banks of the Chattahoochee River, and often passed near the encampment of hostile tribes of Indians. There had been no rain for two months, and the woods were on fire at times throughout the journey, which presented at night a scene of great sublimity. We were often surrounded by smoke and flame, and were scorched and nearly strangled by the dense smoke that emanated from the burning pine trees. On one occasion, the horses were unmanageable, and ran towards the flames, and we supposed we would be lost, but we subdued the terror of the horses, and emerged from the flames after infinite peril and trouble. The miserable habitations were often thirty miles apart, and we nearly died from thirst, but we reached Franklin, Alabama, after unexampled suffering. I soon repaired to Bennett’s Plantation, five miles from Franklin, and opened my school, near his house, in a log cabin, to which Bennett permitted children to come from the surrounding country. My health was poor, and I nearly died with dyspepsia. I soon discovered that Bennett was intemperate and cruel to his slaves, most of whom had committed grave offences, and had been confined in the prisons of Georgia and Alabama. Bennett’s Overseer whipped the slaves every morning, and my feelings were lacerated almost beyond endurance, when I heard the lash, and their piercing cries for mercy. Mike, a slave, fled in the night, and Bennett and the Overseer pursued and captured him partially drunk in a swamp. They tied him to a tree, near my window, and paddled him with a wooden spade full of holes, which brought blood and blisters at every blow. I had witnessed the executions of murderers at the North, but I never beheld brutality like this. I closed my window, and went to bed, and buried myself in the clothes, so that I could not hear the blows, and poor Mike’s thrilling appeals for succor. Chloe, a slave from Africa, (who was seventy years old, and had been the slave of Bennett’s father,) told a lie to screen one of her children, who had been absent two nights on a drunken frolic, and she was tied to a tree, and severely horsewhipped on her naked back. I shall never forget the moans of poor Chloe, as the whip lacerated her scanty flesh, and aged bones. Mrs. Bennett taught her children, male and female, to whip the children slaves, and when they did not strike hard, she would fly into a fearful passion, and lash her own children for their lenity towards the sinless little slaves. These cruel scenes disgusted and harrowed my heart beyond the power of language to express, and I resolved to resort to honorable stratagem to get away from Bennett’s Plantation. So, on Bennett’s return from his favorite amusement of hunting deer at night, with which the country teemed, he was very proud of his success in killing deer, and was partially intoxicated, and in sparkling humor, and I breathed in his merry ears the following plaintive intelligence. I told him that I was ill, and anticipated a return of fits, which sometimes tormented me for months,—that, at times, when I emerged from these fits, I was wild and dangerous, unless confined in irons, and that I once nearly strangled a child, during my delirium. He started back, and stared like an owl, and his wife opened her mouth, and stretched her large gray eyes prodigiously, and asked me how long I had had symptoms of the return of fits. I said, about two days. Bennett then inquired about how long before I expected they would commence. I replied, in a day or two. He asked me if I desired to return to Apalachicola, and thence to New York, or would rather go by way of Columbus, Georgia. I told him that I had a brother in New Orleans, who was proprietor of the “New Orleans Daily Times,” and I would like to go to him, as he knew how to nurse me, when the fits were on. He said that he would let his slave Edward take me in his wagon down the banks of the Chattahoochee, to the point where the mail stage passed, on its way to Lagrange, where I could get a steamer to Pensacola, and thence to Mobile and New Orleans. I told him that I had no money. He said he would supply me with enough to defray my expenses to New Orleans. In the morning, while the Overseer was whipping slaves in the yard, I started down the Chattahoochee, and, after an encampment of three nights, reached the road that led to Lagrange. On the following day, the stage arrived, and I left for Lagrange. General James Hamilton, of South Carolina, was a passenger, with whom I had many a pleasant conversation. After a tedious journey through the piny solitudes of Florida, we arrived at Lagrange, and left for Pensacola, in a ricketty steamer, in which we came near being lost in the Gulf of Mexico, in about half a gale. At Pensacola, we took the steamer Champion, and proceeded to Mobile, and thence to New Orleans, by way of Lake Pontchartrain. I boarded with my brother Albert in Poydras street, and worked in his printing office. I learned, through the newspapers, that the Captain left Apalachicola for Havana, but couldn’t find it, and went to Key West—that he left for New York, and was capsized in the Atlantic ocean, and only the second mate was saved, who stated in substance that “six of us were on a raft for nine days, and, after we ate the dog, we drew lots for each other, and that he who drew the shortest piece of shirt from my inclosed hand, should die, but have the privilege of resisting the other five in their attempted slaughter of his body for his blood and flesh as their water and food,—that a Hungarian passenger drew the shortest cut, and fought for his life for two hours, on the raft, which was the roof of the deck cabin, and very large, and could hold twenty men with safety,—that the Hungarian at last fell asleep at midnight, against his will, and we cut his head entirely off, and drank his blood, and ate his flesh, and I never relished any food like the Hungarian’s,—that on the tenth day, the first mate died from eating too heartily of the Hungarian, and on the eleventh day a passenger and sailor died from exhaustion,—that on the twelfth day a vessel came near, and while on a mountain wave just over my head, the cook discovered myself and the last sailor down in the cavern of the ocean,—the cook screamed,—the helmsman discovered us,—a rope was cast, and I seized it, and tied it around me,—another is thrown,—I tied it around my comrade, and gave the signal to hoist away, and up we went into the vessel, but, alas! my sailor boy was dead, dying from exhaustion and excessive joy at his too sudden and unexpected rescue!” This melancholy news cast a profound gloom over my meditations for several weeks. I now see an advertisement for a teacher in Napoleonville, on Bayou Lafourche, about twenty miles from Donaldsonville, and seventy-five miles west of New Orleans, on the plantation of Thomas Pugh, who was a classmate of President Polk, the Reverend Doctor Hawks, and the Reverend Doctor Thomas House Taylor, of Grace Church, and other distinguished men, at Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Albert C. Ainsworth and Senator Conrad, of New Orleans, gave me letters to Mr. Pugh, which secured the situation. Mr. Pugh was a Member of the Legislature, and so was Mr. Conrad. Mr. Ainsworth was a native of Providence, Rhode Island, and an old school mate of mine, whose father was a school master. Mr. Pugh had about two hundred slaves on his sugar and cotton plantations, and his brother, just below him, on the Bayou, had a thousand slaves. I found Mr. Thomas Pugh to be a noble character, and very kind to his slaves, who most fondly loved him. I had a school house in the centre of a beautiful field, to which came the pretty children of Mr. Pugh, and about a dozen others from the contiguous plantations. I had six hundred dollars per annum, and a horse to ride when I chose, and a slave named Nathan to wait upon me. The country teemed with poultry, and we had the most delicious oysters, and all the choice fruits and vegetables of those sunny and prolific latitudes. I was thrown from my horse one moonlight evening, while riding along the Bayou, and soon after was bitten by a snake, and in about a week found a lizzard in my bed when I awoke in the morning, and I got uneasy and very nervous, and left Mr. Pugh and his interesting family with tearful sorrow, because they had treated me with parental kindness. I returned to New Orleans, and engaged passage in a steamer for Louisville, Kentucky.
(To be continued to our last dream.)
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