New-York daily tribune. [volume] (New-York [N.Y.]) 1842-1866, 1860-07-31
REPLY TO AN Ex.FRIEND

To the Hon. WASHINGTON HUlST.
SIR: have your letter of the 25th and cheer
fully print it on the preceding page. l do believe
in free discussion, and your indelity to that great
principle shall not cause me to swerve from my
faith. / bid you welcome to the columns Of THE
TRIBUNE, even though you use them to pettifog the
case of those Southern deft nders of the rights of
property" who take The TRIBUNE from the
post. Offices and burn it before the eyes of those
who have paid for and want to read it, They do
this without reading looking at the paper to see
whether it does or Goes not contain anything OBJ
jectonabe they do it sometimes 10 defiance of all
law sometimes under the sanction of such acts of
Internal tyranny as that of Texas, which your
" Union" friend, Sam Houston, approved as Gov
ernor last Winter-an act which far Outstrips and
dwarfs anything ever done in that line by the most
benighted and arbitrary despot of Naples or Spain.
But, never mind, Governor free discussion is
right, even though it requires Republicans to sur
render their columns to opponents who never re-
ciprocate but who use those columns to bolster up
the cause of all this iniquity. would like to diff
fuse your letter with my answer throughout the
South; but your friends there will not permit me.
They think it safer and more advantageous to
them to burn both without reading; and perhaps
they are right. "He that doeth evil hateth the
." light, neither cOmeth to the light, lest his deeds
" be reproved." They cannot have both Slave y
and Freedom of the Press; if they ,oiH maintain
and perpetuate the former, they must put down
the latter.
AS to all that is personal in your letter, shall
say very little. fully realize that, in comparison
with the great public issues wherein we differ, you
and are of very little consequence Suffice it
that, for the first twelve years of its existence,
THE TRIBUNE did what it could to support and
commend you as political aspirant; and you then
thought its editor candid truthful, and patriotic
Since then, it has opposed and still opposes YOU
and you now think that editor ''incapable Of fair
" ness and candor," prone to "imprecations and
"invectives," accuse Inc of clothing myself "with
curses as with garment" of pouring forth ga
" turbid stream of hatred, malice aDd all unchar-
4" itableness," and of exhaustIng on my opponents
my "artillery of vulgar repToaches'-and so on
| take all this as matter of course, merely OBJ
serving that, as it is obvious that either you or
have changed decidedly since the old days, pro-
pose to submit the case to your neighbors aud
fellow citizens of Niagara County, among whom
you have lived for the last thirty years, and
to most of whom you are Familiarity known, while
am personally stranger to the great majority of
them, and let them decide whether it is you or
who have essentially altered. will test the mat
tiers in difference between them by comparison
of their votes when we agreed with those they
have cast since; or will take their sense this Fall
in any manner which shall seem practicable. OF
the Twer ty Thousand Wings in this City and Two
Hundred Thousand in the State who supported you
for Governor against both the democratic" and
the "Union-Saving" nominations, am sure that
fully nine tenths condemn your present attitude
and deprecate your efforts; while the great body
of those who then opposed you, especially those
who did so as Union-Savers are delighted with
YOUR present course. Whether you are indeed
Giles Scroggins or not, these facts must go far to
determine.
You are quite right in saying that we were
both-from the time you left the Democratic party
in Is39-4O-decded and jealous Whigs-suppOrt-
ers of Harrison and of Clay. You might have said
a little more clearly than you did that we were
Anti-slavery Wings, and together supported the
cause Of Free Labor and Free Soil in all the
" sectional" struggles of those days. You not
merely voted uniformly in Congress, throughout
your six years of service, in favor of the express
ard peremptory exclusion Of Slavery from every
Territory organ zed or seeking to be during these
years-you voted repeatedly for resolves looking to
the abolition of the District Slave-trade, with pre-
ambles affirming the essential inhumanity and ini.
guilty Of Slavery in terms very offensive to "onr