three months ago it was whispered about that I was a member of the secret disloyal organization in Northern Texas.  Such lies could have been counted by scores.  Most of them are dead and rotten; but some still live, by means of assiduous nursing.  And all these lies, and more either you or Hindman sent to the President at Richmond.

I say, sir, you never inquired into any thing.  You never wished to hear any thing, whatever from me.  You disobeyed the orders with which you were sent as a public curse and calamity into Arkansas, as if the State were not already sufficiently infested by Hindman.  Is it true that he has lately, upon his single order, and without the ceremony of even a mock trial, caused three men “suspected of disloyalty” to be shot; and that, two of them being proven to him to be true Southern men, he sent a reprieve, which, either setting out too late, or lagging on the way, reached the scene of murder after their blood had bathed the desecrated soil of Arkansas?  It has come to me so, from officers direct from Fort Smith.  At any rate, he has put to death nine or ten persons, without any legal trial.  Who is he, that he should do these things in this nineteenth century?  And who are you, sir, that you should suffer, and by suffering, approve and adopt them?  How many more murders will suffice to awaken public vengeance?

Was the Star Chamber any worse than Hindman’s Military Commissions, that are ordered to preserve no records?  Were the Lettres de Cachet of Louis XV, any greater outrage on the personal liberty of French subjects, than Hindman’s arrests and committal to the Penitentiary of suspected persons?  Was Tristan l’Hermite any more the minister of tyranny, than his Provost Marshals? or Caligula, Caesar Borgia or Colonel Kirke any more cruel and remorseless than he, that you have sustained all his acts, and made all his atrocities your own?  Take care, sir!  You are not so high, that you may not be reached by the arm of justice.  The President is above you both, and God is above him, and sometimes interferes in human affairs.

Unless the late Secretary of War, through the President, sent an official falsehood to the Congress of the Confederate States, you were sent to Arkansas with positive and unconditional instructions, that, if Gen. Hindman had declared Martial Law in Arkansas, and adopted oppressive police regulations under it, you should rescind the

declarations of Martial Law, and the Regulations adopted to carry it into effect.  You have not done so.  You have not only not rescinded any thing; but you have, by a General Order, long ago, continued in force all orders of General Hindman, not specially revoked by you.  That order could have no retroactive effect, to make his orders to have been valid in the past.  It could only put them in force for the future; and you thereby made them your orders, as fully as if you had re-issued them.  In so doing, you became the enemy of your country, if not of the Human race, and outlawed yourself.