"Honorable Jefferson Davis:
"My father, W. H. H. Self, is under sentence to hang to-day at four o'clock. My mother is dead; my father is my only hope and stay. I pray you pardon him. Let me hear from you by telegraph.
"ELIZABETH SELF."
The young lady carried this despatch to the telegraph office, a distance of two miles, in greatest haste, and had it sent to Richmond immediately. Shortly before three o'clock she received an answer from "President" Davis commuting the old man's sentence to imprisonment, for such length of time as the Commanding General should see proper. The joy of his daughter was, of course, boundless. When Mr. Brownlow left Knoxville, on the 3d of March, Self was still in jail. He has been released before this time, Southern "justice" being satisfied in the premises.
REMARKS OF GENERAL S. F. CAREY.
General S. F. Carey was next introduced. He referred to the deliverance of Dr. Brownlow as a release from dangers greater than those that surrounded Daniel in the lion's den, and from beasts far worse than beset the prophet. His deliverance was not to be credited to their magnanimity, but their fears.
He did not like to find fault with the Government, but it did seem to him that it was time it should bestir itself, and prosecute the war with greater vigor. Nor did he approve the policy pursued towards those taken in rebellion against the Government, referred with much bitterness to the tenderness displayed in the cases of Magoffin, Buckner, and the rebel prisoners at Columbus. He [didn't] think the penitentiary the place for them, and would not have the convicts contaminated by them. There was no inmate of the penitentiary, though he had been guilty of murdering his father, mother, or brother, whose crime was not innocence itself compared with that of these rebel prisoners, who sport their uniforms in the streets of Columbus, insulting the fathers and brothers of those men who had fallen in defence of the Union, and sitting in privileged seats in the legislative chambers of the State.
The audience had heard the narrative of the sufferings of loyal women in the South, and yet we have women in the State of Ohio who go to Columbus, with the avowed purpose of making the rebel officers comfortable,—conduct that in his opinion, and notwithstanding their sex, deserved the halter. He had no sympathy with the rebellion or with rebels, and was for cleaning them out root and branch.
In speaking on this subject, he felt the utter feebleness of human language. After it was exhausted, the great crime of rebellion looms up in all its terrible proportions. God speed the day when we shall be delivered! And yet he had no hope for the country till all the remnants of miserable partyism are swept away; he had no hope for it, while politicians were busy at the Capital [intriguing] and scheming for the preservation of some old broken down faction called a party. We need patriotism, not party.
Referring to the remarks of Mr. Brownlow, respecting the treatment that should be meted out to disunionists North and South, Mr. Carey said that while he respected the right of free speech, he was for hanging any man who favored disunion and dared to say so. Every man has his rights, the convict on the gallows, the thief in the penitentiary, but when a man abuses his rights, the right of free speech, to express himself in favor of disunion, be he Wendell Phillips, or any other man, cut him down.
The masses of the people in the North are in favor of a restoration of the Union as it existed before the war. But if the war continues, and the people of the rebellious States are given over to hardness of heart, if they shoot our pickets, if it proves necessary to send a few more thousand men from the loyal States to put down the rebellion, and people Southern grave yards, a cry will go up from Maine to the Pacific to clean out the rebels, niggers and all.
He believed the whole purpose of the Administration in the prosecution of the war, was to preserve the Republic and all its institutions as they existed when it came into power; and nothing is more certain than that the Union will be preserved, though it cost all our property and half the lives in the Republic.