Muscatine weekly journal. [volume] (Muscatine, Iowa) 185?-1890, 1862-07-25
Jones' Reasonable Letters.

III Ill OTuer 10 STatlIy tne SeileIli ueSlre 10
the letters upon which George w. Jones,
= this State, was incarcerated in Fort Lafayctt
we publish them to-day to the exclusion
our usual variety. Jones is the acknowledge
leader of the Democracy Of this State, an
80 boasts in recent letter to the Dubuque He
aLi, Cn which he complains that the "Abol
ton papers have given greater emphasis I
certain portions of his letter to jeff Davis tina
he intended, by italicising them, that he ha
70 "received many, ve'g ma"y, assurances
from his political friends in Iowa of their de
. termination to return him to Congress, o
give him some other exalted position.
We introduce the letters of Jones by SOM
!, comments from the N Y. Tribune:
Il The letter which follows is most character
istic and significant. George W. Jones, O
, Iowa, its author, has been in the service ant
pay of the Federal Government for the past
twenty years. He has held capital places
Surveyor General, Delegate in Congress, U. S
Senator, and, finally, that of Embassador
While still holding the latter post, in May OF
last year, he addressed this trucking, fawn-
ing, -souled, traitorous letter to the chosen
chief of the Disunion Confederacy. Read and
ponder we'll its contents:
LEGATION I. S., BoGoTA, N. g.,
May II, 1861.
Ny NOBLE AND VERY DEAR FRIEND In
consequence of the continuance of the horrible
civil war which still continues to be waged in
this distracted and divided republic, and the
interruption of all mail communication from
the United States and elsewhere, did not re-
ceive your kind and highly priced letter of
the Goth Of January last until the 18th ult,
and then to Honda, to which place repaired
myself expressly for the purpose of receiving
my dispatches, letters newspapers, which |
heard was there. 1t took me three days tray
cling over almost impossible mountains to get
| to Honda, but l was well repaid for my
| trouble, as | received some % letters from my
wife and children, beside some 20 others from
my Government and old friends, with some
200 newspapers, all Of which have afforded
me both pleasure and pain to read
| did not come across the valedictory
speeches of yourself, dear Clay, Mallory and
Yulee, until yesterday. l devoured them all
with greedy appetite, but not without she'd
ding tears, dear friend, when I read the fare
well Of yourself, especially as so pathetically
expressed in your last speech in the Senate,
as well as that of the 10th of January, when
you so beautifully depicted to your fellow
Senators and the world the situation of the
country and the dangers which were threat
ening it.
You may well say, as you do in your letter
to me, that you know you O will sympa
thize with us (yoU."
How can / feel otherwise, dear old friend,
college mate and colleague, than sympathize
for you and the people whom you represent
on such an occasion? Born in what they |
tauntingly call a free State Indiana, brought
up in Missouri and educated there and in |
Kentucky, Wisconsin and Iowa, | cannot but |
be well acquainted with the principles, feel |
ings and actions of the parties to the contest |
which is now going on in my beloved country |
When | went to Wisconsin (Sinsinawa
Mound, then Michigan took with me my
servants, whom, at their request, purchased
they having been born in Illinois, and made |
slaves under the ordinance of 1887. Abloi- |
tionists, who like Doty, Bronson, Burnett, ct
al, came to my house to share my hospitality, |
told my slaves they were free, and actually |
induced the ignorant, but happy Paul to be-
lieve he was free, and to bring suit for him
self and sister Charlotte, both of whom you
may recollect, as they waited on you when
you visited'u l had veXatious and long
lawsuit with Paul, but triumphed over him
and his Abolition advisers l served in Con- |
gress as Delegate from Michigan and Wiscon-
sin two years each, and was then beaten for |
the third term by Doty, because l served as
a second in the Cilley Graves duel, and was a
slave-owner.
In1S41, was removed from the Office of
Suryeyor-General of Wisconsin and Iowa by |
Gen. Narrison's Admins tration, through |
Dotv's influence as the then Delegate, simply |
because was Democrat and sympathized
with the South-no single objection having |
been made against me Of any ether character. |
Mr.. Polk, God bless him, restored me in |
1s45, and put out the long-legged Black Re- |
publican, Jim Wilson of New Hampshire, who
had superseded me.
was transferred from the Surveyor-Gen |
erals office in December, 1S4S, to the United
States Senate, and drixen therefrom by the
Abolitionists in March, 1859: no other obJec-
ton having ever been made.to me save that L
was a follower of the South and doughface
for such men as yourself, Clay, and other
Southerners. If, therefore, l had no other
reason for sympathizing with the South, the
bad treatment which have received at the
hands of the Northern Abolitionists would
have made me do so. But upon the ConstI-
tutionaI question, and upon that OF expedlen-
CIV. I had not single doubt, but if [ had my
residence in this country and my knowledge OF
the effect of freeing the negroes in the West
Indies and in this Republic, would certainly
have made convert of me as it has OF every
Englishman, Frenchman German, and other
foreigners whom have ever met with In this
country, and who have seen the bad effects OF
Abolitionism.
had hoped that Mr.. Lincoln would have
proclaimed soon after his election his total
dissent from the mad schemes of his Abolition
supporters, so as to avert the disrupting tor
nado which saw before left New York last
November was about to cause dissolution OF
orr heretofore glorious Union. l believed,
from the course which he had pursued with
douglas in his campaign for the Senate IN
1878 that he was not imbued so thoroughly
with Abolitionism as his Republican support
crs supposed, and therefore really preferred
him then and last fall to Douglas, who knew
to be an unprincipfed demagogue, and was
making speeches in the North to please ADO
l;tionists. and would then 60 South and make
discourses of an opposite character. 10 him,
more than any other man in our country pro-
Tossing Democratic principles or even Aboll-
ton doctines, is our country indebted for the
agitation if not destruction of our Union.
But for him and his friends who broke up the
Charleston Convention Democrat would have
been elected last fall to the Presidency, and
before another contest such an arrangement
would have been made as to have prevented
dissolution of the Union and perhaps civil
, war. My latest dates are to February 22d,
and I tremble at the thoughts OF receiving
other dispatches, &C., lest they shall announce
the existence of civil war. My prayers arc