Returning Thanks to My Friends
Shouldering the responsibilities and the financial burden of a new magazine, is a serious matter. As nearly everybody will understand, it involves tens of thousands of dollars in the way of necessary expense, and whether you will ever see that money again depends entirely upon circumstances over which you yourself have nothing like absolute control. There are already so many brilliant and beautiful magazines circulating throughout the Union, that establishing another is a venture that borders upon temerity.
But in my case there was no alternative. It had to be done. Flesh and blood could not bear the infamous treatment which was being handed out to me by that fat rascal, Col. W. D. Mann, and that lean sneak, C. Q. DeFrance. Out of consideration for the subscribers, as well as in justice to myself, it was absolutely necessary that I should establish a magazine of my own, which should extend to the subscribers of the New York Magazine the privilege of securing the remainder of their terms from a magazine which was, in fact, what the name of the New York Magazine had led subscribers to believe it to be.
To have Mann and DeFrance publishing, in New York, a Watson’s Magazine, and securing money from thousands of innocent people, who would subscribe upon the faith of my name, and would then be told falsehoods as to why I was no longer writing for it, WOULD HAVE BEEN AN INTOLERABLE SITUATION.
To remain silent and acquiescent under those circumstances, would have been to make myself a party to the fraud. I understand that Col. Mann and C. Q. DeFrance are using, for themselves, the money sent to the Watson’s Magazine by those who are not aware of the fact that there is no Watson connected with THAT Magazine. If they do not extend to the subscriber the option of getting his money back, or of having it sent to the genuine Watson’s Magazine, they will be cheats and swindlers; and they ought to be made to plead on the criminal side of the Court, where the appearance of Col. Mann would not be considered extraordinary.
Not wanting to be a party to a fraud by making no effort to defeat it, and not having a disposition to lie down quietly while those two rascals trampled upon me, I announced the purpose of establishing Watson’s Jeffersonian Magazine. Of course it was hoped that my friends would stand by me. It was hoped that those subscribers who had gone to the Magazine in New York would follow my Magazine in Atlanta.
Did the subscribers of the New York Magazine want a real Watsonian Magazine, or was it just any old magazine that they were after? Were those subscribers men and women who had faith in me, and who were attached to myself, my work and my message? Would they have sufficient interest in the matter to sympathize with me, and follow me? These were the questions. They could not be answered until the opportunity was offered for the subscribers themselves to act.
With grateful heart, I hereby return profound thanks to those steadfast and earnest comrades who have already enrolled themselves with Watson’s Jeffersonian Magazine.
These friends did not wait for a sample copy; they did not wait for the day of publication. They had faith. They knew in advance what my Magazine would be. They had confidence. They knew perfectly well that their money would be safe in my hands. Therefore, from California to North Carolina and from Florida to Michigan, they have poured in upon me their letters of sympathy and encouragement. And together with these letters they sent remittances to cover their subscriptions in advance.