Part 10

But it is due to the history of this controversy that I should say, this second attack upon me sets forth that you are from home, and that "the _Junior_ is responsible for the article." This might be credited, if, on your return home, you had protested against such abuse, but it seems from your silence to have met with your heart's approval, and gave "general satisfaction," at least to _you_! It is true that you were absent at the time of both these publications, but it does not follow, as a matter of course, that you were not the veritable author, and that they did not find their way to the "Democrat" office at the same time and in the same way that your "Baltimore Correspondence" got there. The "Junior," as he styles himself, claims the fraternity; and were it not that he is too well known in Fincastle for any sane man to believe that _he_ wrote the articles, he might have the credit (if credit there be attached to it) of so low, malicious, and lying articles. But he is known in Fincastle to be a brainless man, and to be incapable of writing a paragraph on any subject. He is known to have no use of language, and to be incapable of applying epithets to any one. So that, if _you_ did not write these articles, they were manufactured at "Irish Corner," in Fincastle, your "Junior" not being able to do it, for the reason that he is wholly incapable. My opinion is, that the articles were manufactured by the "Great Mogul" of the Anti-American party in your town, and if he will only avow himself the author, I will make some disclosures upon him that will make him wish himself back in "Swate Ireland," where he "lives, and moves, and has his being;" no disclosures are necessary--his books, and his person, damn him to everlasting infamy. He has the filthiest-looking mouth, and the most offensive breath, of any man in the Valley of Virginia. No man who knows him will meet him square on the pavement, or place himself in a position, if it can be avoided, of meeting a breeze from that great reservoir of all nastiness, his mouth! It is really a wonder how any human being can LIVE, and emit all the time a stream of such overwhelming and uninterrupted STENCH! You must permit me to christen this man as the But-Cut of Original Sin, and the Upper-crust of all Nastiness!

It may not set well upon your stomach, that being a "Minister of the Gospel, and having the care of souls," I should seem not to place implicit confidence in your denial of any participation in this unprovoked war upon me. I will be candid with you, and though it is possible for me to be mistaken in my views, still, if I am, I am honestly deceived. I have no confidence in the moral honesty and Christian integrity of any Protestant Preacher, of any denomination, in this country, who openly arrays himself against the American party, and takes the side of the Catholics, Foreigners, and self-styled Democrats associated with them. Nor will I hear one such preach or pray, if I know him to be such, and can get out of his hearing. The growing light and improvements of this age forbid that an intelligent and pious man and minister should identify himself with that party. And the fiery genius, corrupting tendencies, and uncompromising intolerance of that party, are rapidly driving good and true men out of the party.

There never was a time since the division of parties in this country, when I had so little confidence in what is called the Democratic party as at present; and as at present organized and constituted, I believe it to be the most corrupt organization. It is made up of the odds and ends of all factions and parties on the continent, and is one of the most anomalous combinations of fanaticism, idolatry, prostitution, crime, and absurdities conceivable! The _isms_ composing the party of which you are a member, are: Abolitionism; Free-soilism; Agrarianism; Fourieritism; Millerism; Radicalism; Woman's Rightsism; Mobism; Mormonism; Spiritualism; Locofocoism; Higher-Lawism; Foreign Pauperism; Anti-Americanism; Roman Catholicism; Deism, and modern Sag Nichtism! All this tide of fanaticism and error, originating North of Mason and Dixon's Line, went for Pierce in the last Presidential contest: they are with that party now, against the American party; and it is bad company in which to find a Protestant minister! Yet, miserable Protestants hesitate not to commend these enemies of the natural rights of man, and of the Christian religion, as being just as good Christians as their neighbors!

"Oh! judgment, thou hast fled to brutish beasts; And men have not their reason!"

But, Doctor, why were you at Baltimore? Why, sir, during the past year, you and other conscientious Methodists took it into your heads to arraign a young man who was travelling your circuit, Mr. Hall, and, for the Church's good, to have him expelled, whose great sin was that he was a _Know-Nothing_, or sympathized with the Order! The authorities of the Church, after a patient hearing of the whole case, pro and con, acquitted the young man. You followed him up to the Annual Conference, as the representative of and attorney for Sag Nichtism. The Conference acquitted the young preacher again, and sent him to an enlightened circuit in Maryland. This so offended you, and your patriotic, not to say _pious_ associates, that, for the Church's good, they resigned their stewardship in the Church, and were so offended at the course of the Presiding Elder, _Rev. M. Goheen_, than whom there is not a more modest, unassuming, conservative Christian gentleman in the Valley of Virginia, that, at a recent Quarterly Meeting there, they refused to attend church, or to hear him preach. This is just the spirit that actuates your party, everywhere.

You demand of me the name or names of such person or persons as have given me information in reference to you. Reconsider this demand, if you please, and ask yourself if, under all the circumstances, it is not a cool piece of impudence. I have published nothing about you upon the authority of others, but upon my own authority and responsibility. You _suspect_ some of your neighbors for writing to me, and hence you make this demand. It is true, I have friends in Fincastle, and some of these write to me, and when I publish any thing about you, or any one of your associates, and give these friends of mine as authority, I will give you their names, if called upon to do so; or I will assume the responsibility myself. What I have said in reply to the wicked, slanderous, and cowardly assault upon me, in the dirty paper controlled by you, I have said upon my own responsibilities, as a man, and as a member of the same Church to which you belong; and whether my "peace as a citizen" is preserved or destroyed, I am not the man to be intimidated or driven from my position. My failure to give you the names of any citizens of your vicinity, who may have written me private letters, relating to your war upon young Hall, the Circuit Preacher, "will detract largely from the estimate you have placed upon my character." This I am sorry to hear, as I do not wish to fall below the "estimate" placed upon my character in the two issues of your paper, now before me! This would be reaching "a lower deep," as the poet classically styles it!

Now, sir, I have a letter from a town in Virginia, not far distant from Fincastle, written by a gentleman of as "great personal courage" as you or myself, who states, that a gentleman who was present at the trial of Rev. Mr. Hall, heard you make the assertion, on that occasion, that you alone were responsible for all the editorials that appeared in the "Democrat," and that the "Junior" partner was not! If you think proper to make an issue with this gentleman, you can have his name!

I am, Dr. Hopkins, your humble servant,

W. G. BROWNLOW,

_Editor of the Knoxville Whig._

[From the Knoxville Whig.]

TO STEPHEN TRIBBLE.

VILLAINOUS SIR:--Letters from my friends in the West inform me that you are making a full team in the service of the Devil, Locofocoism, and crime, in portions of Missouri and Kentucky! You have recently held forth in Charleston, a pleasant post-village, the capital of Mississippi county, Missouri, about six miles south-west of the "Father of Waters!" In that town you undertook to inform the good people, the Circuit Judge being present, _who I am_, and to demonstrate that I am not entitled to credit in any thing I say! You claimed to have once lived in East Tennessee--to know the people and the country--and to have known William T. Senter and James Y. Crawford, two other Methodist preachers, whose _pedigrees_ you pretend to give!

Mr. Senter was an able man--a moral and upright man--and a Whig Representative in Congress, from the District you represented _in the jail of Sullivan county_, for a long time previous to your being _branded in the hand and on the cheeks_, for MANSLAUGHTER, the particulars of which I will remind you of before I close this familiar letter! Mr. Senter could have gone to Congress longer, but voluntarily retired. Mr. Crawford was a brother-in-law to Mr. Senter, and was a preacher of respectable talents, and in good standing in his Church. They are both in their graves, beyond the reach of your malice, where the sound of your infamous voice, and the words of your lying tongue, can never penetrate their ears! But I am still above ground, daily kicking, and making war upon the Locofoco Paupers and Foreign Catholics, as well as Native Traitors, with whom you are associated, and with whom you act in politics. I acknowledge myself to be game for you to hunt down!

You are now a _Campbellite preacher_ as well as a _Sag Nicht Missionary_; and the garb of religion you wear, gives a degree of weight to your falsehoods and slanders, among strangers, that they otherwise would not have. The idea of "_Stev Tribble_," who ingloriously fled from this country for crimes he could not meet in open court, being a preacher, and itinerating through the West, "in search of the lost sheep of the house of Israel," is so ridiculous, as scarcely to be believed at all, although there is no doubt but what he has been regularly installed in Kentucky, and now has the "care of souls."

Why, you unmitigated old villain, your whole career, from your "youth up," has been one of crime and revolting blackguardism. While a boy and a young man, where Hoss's school was taught in Washington county, your vulgar conversation, immoral practices, indecent habits, and blackguardism, disgusted the entire neighborhood, and rendered you so odious that no decent family would board you! All the waters of the far-famed _Jordan_, in the palmiest days of that bold stream, were not sufficient to wash your sins away! If the Lord Bishop of London were to _immerse_ you as often as "seventy times seven," in the waters of "bold Jordan," and in the name of the holy Trinity, you would still remain what you were when you fled from this country to avoid the extreme penalty of the law--one of the greatest scoundrels for whom Christ died!

Yourself and half-brother _Havron_ were confined in Blountville Jail, for the murder of _William Humphreys_, a promising young man, whom you brutally assaulted and murdered in open daylight in the streets of Kingsport, in Sullivan county, and without provocation! _You_ were tried and convicted of _manslaughter_, and branded in the _hand_ and on the _cheek_. After being branded, you _bit the letters out of your hand_, and _clawed them out of your face_, but the _scars_ are to be seen in both. Indeed, I have been written to, to know why these scars are on your face! I take this method of answering those inquiries; and publishing them in my "Whig," which has a circulation of 5,000, and our "Campaigner," which circulates 7,000 copies, I shall be able to introduce you to as many persons as may have heard you preach my funeral.

While in the Blountville Jail, with your half-brother, Havron, whose blow killed Humphreys, after you had weakened him, you caught hold of the jailor, Montgomery Irvin, and held him in a scuffle, when he entered the room with your dinner, until Havron made his escape. Havron would have pulled hemp, had he not escaped; and had our penitentiary system existed at that time, you would have been sentenced for life! But you would not have remained there longer than the past summer, as we have a Governor who pardons out all such men, and has more sympathies for them than any other Executive Officer in the nation. You have a half-brother who is a Sag Nicht member of our Legislature, and a great friend and supporter of our Governor and his foreign associates, and he could have turned you out and procured for you an office if you had remained. But then you followed the teachings of "the spirit" of Sag Nichtism, in leaving between two days, and emigrating to Kentucky, as many precious souls would never have "heard the word," or had their sin washed away, but for you!

In an unmentionable and disgraceful enterprise, you became possessed of a _broken leg_, and were mean enough to abscond without paying the bill of your physician, Dr. Patton, whose unremitting attention saved you from your grave, and from the clutches of the Devil, sooner than the old fellow was prepared for your reception! If you had the honor of a first class thief, you would pay this medical bill out of the proceeds of the first public collection you take up, either in Missouri or Kentucky. And if you suffer it to go unpaid until your infinitely infernal career is wound up, the Day of Judgment will disclose the manner of your breaking your leg! If I were you, I would sooner pay this bill now, than to be asked in the great day how my leg was broken!

Disgraced as you are, unprincipled and villainous, you have gone into Kentucky, taken upon yourself "holy orders," and married a wife, imposing most shamefully upon the family into which you married. The woman you have thus imposed upon, would be justifiable now, in the eyes of both God and man, in forsaking you and applying for a divorce. And no court or jury would refuse her application, when made acquainted with your character.

It is a remarkable fact--one that I desire to call, not so much to your notice, as to the notice of the public generally--that while all the members of this Foreign Democratic party are by no means villains, destitute of principle; yet, all the assassins, cut-throats, thieves, and hypocrites in the country have crowded into the ranks of that party! Fawned upon, fostered and pampered by the villainous leaders, demagogues, and tricksters of the party, who need the services of all such scavengers, you are encouraged to act with them. These leaders, who are really no better than you are, _generously_ admit you to a fellowship, and _courteously_ acknowledge all such abandoned rascals to be their equals! Such men, to a great extent, now constitute the free-democracy of the country--they desecrate the ballot-box--disgust decent men wherever they come in contact with them--blaspheme the name of God--and swear that they will either rule or ruin the country!

But, Sir, it was said of a certain man in the Scriptures, that he was a "sinner above all the sinners that dwell in Jerusalem." So it may in perfect truth be said of you, that you are a scoundrel above all the scoundrels in the hateful ranks of Sag Nichtism. You deserve, for your depraved course of life, a greater punishment than you have received or are likely to receive in this life. The guilt of foul calumny, of the most black and odious kind, attaches to every sentence uttered by your lying tongue. Guilt, the offspring of fiend-like malice, shamefully false, deeply corrupt, and badly matured: perfidy, dishonesty, and rank poison--hot incense of murder, theft, inhuman spoliation, and deep, dark forebodings of damnation have been rooted and grounded in your heart, for lo! these many years! Dark despair, endless death, inexpressible misery, manifold, and worse than death, follow in the ghastly train of your crimes, and riot in your corrupt bosom, as with infernal drunkenness of delight! The record of your deep depravity, of your utter want of principle, and of your ten thousand villainous exploits, is _stereotyped_ upon the burning sands of eternity, and stamped on the imperishable walls of the _rotunda_ of the Devil's Hell, to which you are driving at railroad speed! In upper East Tennessee, where you are known, it would disgrace an _Algerine Bandit_ to sit and hear you pretend to preach! _You_ pretend to preach Christ and him crucified, and _immerse_ persons in the name of the Trinity! Shrouded in the _sackcloth and ashes_ of disgrace, enclosed in a _vault_ filled to the brim with _buried and putrefied venality_, and steeped to the very nose and chin in crime, how dare you attempt to preach!

I repeat, you vile slanderer of the living and the dead, that, in justice to the cause of God and of civilization, I will keep spread the unfurled banner of your infamy on every breeze, and cause it to float in the atmosphere of every State in this Union, until your very _name_ becomes a mockery and a by-word! And I call upon the people of Kentucky and Missouri to ring the loud knell of your infamy, from steep to steep, and from valley to valley, until their swelling sounds are heard in startling echoes, mingling with the rush of the criminal's torrent, and the mighty cataract's earthquake-voice!

W. G. BROWNLOW,

_Editor of the Knoxville Whig._

June 7th, 1856.

AN EXPOSE OF ROMAN CATHOLICISM.

The following articles, setting forth the DESIGNS and TENDENCY of Romanism in the United States, appeared in the "KNOXVILLE WHIG" of May and June, 1856, and will speak for themselves. The writer has opposed the Papal Hierarchy for twenty years; and in a series of articles, now filed in a number of the "JONESBOROUGH WHIG," published _sixteen years ago_, he _predicted_ that the very state of things we are now realizing would come upon us as soon as the year 1860, and that the party calling itself by the revered name of _Democrat_, would identify itself with political Romanism!

THE CATHOLIC QUESTION.--NO. I.

The American Party and the Religious Test--The Louisiana Delegation and the Gallican Catholics--The vote of the Philadelphia Convention to admit the Louisiana Delegates--The American Councils in Louisiana--Catholics proper cannot be true citizens of a Republic.

It is sometimes said by the Anties, that the American party, at their late Philadelphia Convention, dismissed the Catholic Question from their platform, and that they admitted into their Council a Catholic Delegation from Louisiana. We were in that Convention, from the hour of its opening until its final close, and we deny both statements. The fifth and tenth sections of the platform adopted at Philadelphia, and for which we voted, are in the following words, and they express all our platform says upon that subject:

5th. No person should be selected for political station, (whether of native or foreign birth,) who recognizes any allegiance or obligation of any description to any foreign prince, potentate, or power, or who refuses to recognize the Federal and State Constitutions (each within its sphere) as paramount to all other laws, as rules of political action.

10th. Opposition to any union between Church and State; no interference with religious faith or worship, and no tests oaths for office.

The American party was against political Romanism--against all who acknowledge any allegiance to a foreign Prince, Potentate, or Power; or who acknowledge any authority on earth, higher and more binding than the Constitutions of our States, and General Government. And those who are familiar with the temporal assumptions of Popery, and the political intrigues of the Order of Jesuits, can have no other feelings than those of disgust, upon hearing the Locofoco demagogues of the country cry out against the American party for their opposition to the poor Catholics! Against Popes confined to _Rome_, we make no war; but against Popes usurping civil and spiritual authority, in America, we protest most solemnly, and intend to make war, unrelenting and unceasing war!

The Louisiana Delegation, five in number, were _two_ Methodist--_one_ Old School Presbyterian--one Episcopalian--and the other, Mr. Eustes, a member of Congress, not a member of any Church. Those gentlemen presented their credentials for admission, and they were objected to, because Roman Catholics were admitted into the Order by the Louisiana State Council. A warm debate ensued, on a motion to admit the Delegation, on their credentials, which finally prevailed, by yeas 67, nays 50, many of the members having left for their lodgings, because of the lateness of the hour, and of their fatigue. _We_ were in favor of their admission, and so was Mr. Nelson, of East Tennessee, and we both claim to be _ultra_ Protestant, if the reader please.

The "Catholicism" of Louisiana, we wish it borne in mind--that is the Gallican wing of the Church--is a very different species of "Catholicism" from that of our Irish and German Hierarchy taught in this country, under the training of Archbishop Hughes and Monseigneur Bedini, the Pope's villainous Nuncio. The French Gallican Church has so little respect for the Pope of Rome, that when the King of Sardinia was in Paris, less than twelve months ago, though he was under the interdict of a Papal Bull of excommunication from Pius IX., the Gallican Archbishops of Pius, and other Priests associated with them, visited him regularly, and tendered him unbounded courtesies and honors. The Gallican wing of the Catholic Church of France is liberal, as well as hostile to the insulting claims and pretensions of the Pope. But it is diluted still more with liberality, and with opposition to these claims of the Pope, among the French Creoles of Louisiana. Most of them, though Roman Catholics by name, from being educated in the forms of the Roman Church, have just about as much respect for Rome, and confidence in the Pope, as we have, and God knows that is very little. They denounce Papal Bulls, interdicts, and Nuncios. They throw off all temporal and spiritual allegiance to the Pope--the civil authorities of the United States with them are supreme--they are American born--and hence, our platform does not exclude them, and consequently they were admitted at Philadelphia, or, which is the same, their representatives.

In 1652, under Louis XIV., the Gallican clergy met in Paris, and adopted the following point: "That the Pope has no power, of _Divine right_, to interfere with the temporal affairs of independent States." Thus, the Catholics of Louisiana rejecting the doctrine of the temporal power of the Pope, are not proscribed by the American party. They constitute a sound portion of the American party.