Letters of a Traveller; Or, Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America

by William Cullen Bryant

As soon as the event was known the whole country was roused, and every man who was not an associate of the horse-thieves, shouldered his rifle to go in pursuit of the murderers. They apprehended the father of Driscoll, a man nearly seventy years of age, and one of his sons, William Driscoll, the former a reputed horse-thief, and the latter, a man who had hitherto borne a tolerably fair character, and subjected them to a separate examination. The father was wary in his answers, and put on the appearance of perfect innocence, but William Driscoll was greatly agitated, and confessed that he, with his father and others, had planned the murder of Campbell, and that David Driscoll, his brother, together with another associate, was employed to execute it. The father and son were then sentenced to death; they were bound and made to kneel; about fifty men took aim at each, and, in three hours from the time they were taken, they were dead men. A pit was dug on the spot where they fell, in the midst of a prairie near their dwelling; their corpses, pierced with bullet-holes in every part, were thrown in, and the earth was heaped over them.

The pursuit of David Driscoll and the fellow who was with him when Campbell was killed, is still going on with great activity. More than a hundred men are traversing the country in different directions, determined that no lurking-place shall hide them. In the mean time various persons who have the reputation of being confederates of horse-thieves, not only in Ogle county, but in the adjoining ones, even in this, have received notice from the regulators that they cannot be allowed to remain in this part of the state. Several suspicious-looking men, supposed to be fugitives from Ogle county, have been seen, within a few days past, lurking in the woods not far from this place. One of them who was seen the day before yesterday evidently thought himself pursued and slunk from sight; he was followed, but escaped in the thickets leaving a bundle of clothing behind him.

Samonok, Kane County, Illinois, July 5th.

I have just heard that another of the Driscolls has been shot by the regulators. Whether it was David, who fired at Campbell, or one of his brothers, I can not learn.

Letter IX.

Richmond in Virginia.

Richmond, Virginia, March 2, 1843.

I arrived at this place last night from Washington, where I had observed little worth describing. The statue of our first President, by Greenough, was, of course, one of the things which I took an early opportunity of looking at, and although the bad light in which it is placed prevents the spectator from properly appreciating the features, I could not help seeing with satisfaction, that no position, however unfavorable, could impair the majesty of that noble work, or, at all events, destroy its grand general effect.

The House of Representatives I had not seen since 1832, and I perceived that the proceedings were conducted with less apparent decorum than formerly, and that the members no longer sat with their hats on. Whether they had come to the conclusion that it was well to sit uncovered, in order to make up, by this token of mutual respect, for the too frequent want of decorum in their proceedings, or whether the change has been made because it so often happens that all the members are talking together, the rule being that the person speaking must be bareheaded, or whether, finally, it was found, during the late long summer sessions, that a hat made the wearer really uncomfortable, are questions which I asked on the spot, but to which I got no satisfactory answer. I visited the Senate Chamber, and saw a member of that dignified body, as somebody calls it, in preparing to make a speech, blow his nose with his thumb and finger without the intervention of a pocket-handkerchief. The speech, after this graceful preliminary, did not, I confess, disappoint me.

Whoever goes to Washington should by all means see the Museum at the Patent Office, enriched by the collections lately brought back by the expedition sent out to explore the Pacific. I was surprised at the extent and variety of these collections. Dresses, weapons, and domestic implements of savage nations, in such abundance as to leave, one would almost think, their little tribes disfurnished; birds of strange shape and plumage; fishes of remote waters; whole groves of different kinds of coral; sea-shells of rare form and singular beauty from the most distant shores; mummies from the caves of Peru; curious minerals and plants: whoever is interested by such objects as these should give the museum a more leisurely examination than I had time to do. The persons engaged in arranging and putting up these collections were still at their task when I was at Washington, and I learned that what I saw was by no means the whole.