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England, or to charge the
Roman Catholics with the slaveholders as being opposed to reading the
Bible.
The next day he begged
Dana's pardon for scolding about the omission of his letters, and turned upon the musical critic who had given too much space to the opera-house, and whom he pronounced a detriment.
He admonished another writer for slurring the Jews, commended
Hildreth (the historian) as a good writer, but a “Timothy Pickering Federalist sixty years behind the times.”
On January 17th he wrote:
... Since my letters get in somehow, I am less uneasy here, but every traitor and self-seeker hates me with a demoniac hatred, which is perpetually bursting out. Lastly ... General Shankland, of the Kansas Volunteers, has notified me that he intends to cowhide me the first time he catches me in public.
Now I am a hater of novelty, and never had any taste for being cowhided, cowhid, or cowhidden, or whatever the past participle of the active verb used by General Shankland may be, but he is short of funds, and I could not think of putting him to the trouble of chasing me all over the country, so I shall stay here for the present.
I trust the man of whom he buys the cowhide will know him well enough not to sell it on tick.
I prefer to be the only sufferer by the application.
After commending a speech of
Schuyler Colfax, and asking for its insertion at once, he wrote:
N. B.--General Shankland's cowhiding not yet come to hand-or back.
He sent
Dana a strong letter, again cautioning him not to attack people in
Washington without consulting him, and ending as follows:
... It will hurt us dreadfully.
Do send some one here and kill me if you cannot stop it, for I can bear it no longer.
My life is a torture to me. ...
