Branch—I will spare your feelings. Peter Cooper and his daughter I taught in his own house. He does not deny it; but, if I had taught my father, and was satisfied he was corrupt, I would trample him down. I have attacked the Mayoralty, and for that I am on my way to a prison. Send me there. I will walk with a firm step to my dungeon. Before God—before God, I declare with my hand on my heart, that this is the happiest moment of my life. What have I stolen? Whom have I murdered? What crime have I committed? I have pursued the plunderers of the masses, and for that you send me to a dungeon. You can desert me—the prosecution can oppress me, but God—but God will not desert me. Your prisoner is ready.
Stephen H. Branch’s Alligator.
New York, Saturday, August 14, 1858.
IN MY CELL.
On either side of me are three murderers, and my cell has a murderer’s lock. My bed is straw, with a blanket. I slept well last night, and had a good breakfast this morning, which my keeper kindly procured for me, and who has extended the kindness of a brother towards me, in obtaining every thing I desired for my comfort, and in permitting my friends to visit me. I have read all the daily papers; and to Horace Greeley, Doctor Frank Tuthill of the Times, and to James and Erastus Brooks, for their genial sympathy, I express my cordial gratitude. The Courier & Enquirer is silent, and that is preferable to denunciation, in my shackles and dungeon gloom. Bennett lashes me with the stings of a scorpion, who has fattened on libel and obscenity, and blasphemy, and black mail, from the dawn of his infamous editorial career. In his aged visions he often beholds the poor creatures whom his defamation hurled into premature graves. Halleck, of the Journal of Commerce, is brief but bitter in his comments on my alleged lunacy. The Daily News I have not seen, but I learn that its anathema of me is terrible, and has a bulletin against me written in letters of blood. Its former editor, Mr. Auld, is the Mayor’s Clerk, which accounts for the severe comments of the News. But the article in the Sun grieved me more than all the phillippics of my editorial adversaries. The Sun has clung to me for a dozen years, and to have it desert me now, is like the fatal stab of Brutus at Caesar. But I will forgive Moses S. Beach and John Vance of the Sun for their deep and unexpected gashes in my heart. Let all my friends be cheerful, when I inform them that neither sighs nor tears have passed from my lips or eyes, and that I only grieve at the official stabs at the liberty of speech and of the press, which the people will be sure to avenge, and soon consign the Grand Jury Inquisitions to the Spanish despots, and all their advocates to an ignominious destiny.
STEPHEN H. BRANCH.
OPINIONS OF THE PRESS.
[From the N. Y. Express.]
The Branch Libel Case.—Stephen H. Branch has been convicted of a gross and malicious libel upon Mayor Tiemann, Simeon Draper, and Isaac Bell, and has been sentenced to be imprisoned in the penitentiary for one year, to pay a fine of $250, and stand committed until that sum shall be paid. The scene at the closing of the Court on Wednesday was a very melo-dramatic one, and fully in keeping with all the previous steps in this extraordinary case. Mr. Branch being asked what he had to say why sentence should not be pronounced against him, made a long speech, in which he reviewed the various events of his somewhat eccentric life; but just as he commenced to allude to the libels, and to speak thereon and the persons aggrieved, the court stopped him. The prisoner bore himself with the air of a martyr to the cause of public virtue, and said it was the happiest and proudest day of his life; but his excitement at the close of his address was very great, and his delivery vehement and earnest almost to weeping. The court was full of his sympathizers, who did not scruple to say that they believed the convict to be more sinned against than sinning.