le out on a scouting expedition.
The letter was addressed in this wise:
Read, if you want to, you thieving scalp-hunter, whoever you are, and forward, post-paid, to the lord high chancellor of the devill's exchequer (?) on earth, Jeff Davis, Richmond, Va. headquarters Scalp Hunters, camp Chowan, N. C., January 11. Excellency Davis:
It is with feelings of undeveloped pleasure that an affectionate conscript intrusts this sheet of confiscated paper to the tender mercies of a confederate States mail-carrier, addressed, as it shall be to yourself, O Jeff, Red Jacket of the Gulf and Chief of the Six Nations--more or less.
He writes on the stump of a shivered monarch of the forest, with the pine trees wailing round him, and Endymion's planet rising on the air.
To you, O Czar of all Chivalry and Khan of Cotton Tartary!
he appeals for the privilege of seeking, on his own book, a land less free — a home among the hyenas of the North.
Will you not halt your brave columns and sta
hile an admiring world takes a brief gaze at your glorious and God-forsaken cause, pen for the happy conscipt a furlough without end?
Do so, and mail it, if you please, to that city the windy, wandering Wigfall didn't winter in, called for short Philadelphia.
The Etesian winds sweeping down the defiles of the Old Dominion and over the swamps of Suffolk come moaning through the pines of the Old State laden with the music and sigh themselves away into sweet sounds of silence to the far-off South.
Your happy conscript would go to the far-away North whence the wind comes, and leave you to reap the whirlwind, with no one but your father the devil to rake and bind after you. And he's going.
It is with intense and multifariously proud satisfaction that he gazes for the last time upon our holy flag — that symbol and sign of an adored trinity — cotton, niggers, and chivalry.
He still sees it in the little camp on the Chowan, tied to the peak of its palmetto pole, and floating out over
