The Shasta courier., 1863-09-26
NUMBER 80.
A Conscript's Epistle to JEFF. Davis,

The following quaint epistle has been fur
nished for publication by member of the
Mounted Rifles, who picked it up in desert
ed rebel camp on the Chowan river, about
thirty miles from Winton, while out on
scouting expedition last spring. 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 DEVILS
exchequer ~ on earth, JEFF. Davis, Rich.
mond, Va"
HEADQUARTERS "ScALP HUNTERS"
Camp Chowan, n c., Jan. IL.
Excellency Davis; It is with feelings Of
undeveloped pleasure that an affectionate
conscript entrusts this sheet of confscated
paper to the tender mercies of 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 en- the stump of shivered mon.
arch of the forest, with the 'pine trees wall
ing round him." and Endymon's planet
rising in the air." To you, 0 Czar and Khan
of Cotton Tartary, be appeals for the privi-
lege Of seeking, on bis own hook, a land less
free-a home among the hyenas of the North.
Will you not halt your brave columns, and
stay your gorgeous career for thin space
and while an admiring world takes brief
gaze at your glorious and God forsaken cause,
pen for the happy furlough without end? p
Do so, and mail it, if you please, to that city
the windy, wandering Wigfall did not winter
it, called, for short, Philadelphia.
The Etesian winds sweeping down the de-
files 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
conseript would go to the far away North,
whence the winds come, and leave you to
reap the whirlwind, with no one but your IA.
ther the devil to rake and bind after you
And he's going.
1t is with intense and multifariously proud
satisfaction that he gazed for the last time
upon orr holy fag-that symbol and sign of
an adored trinity-cotton, niggers and chiv-
airy. He still sees it in the little camp on
the Chowan, tied to the peak of its palmetto
pole, and floating out over our boundless
Confederacy, the revived relic of ages gone,
banner of our king of few days and full of
trouble. And that pole in its taperipg uD.
rightness, typifying some Of the grandest
beauties of our nationality-its peak pcint;ar
hopefully towards the tropical stars, and its
big end-run into the ground. Relic and
pole, good bye. IT'S best the conscript goes;
his claims to chiyalry has gone before him.
Behind he leaves the legitimate chivalry of
this unbounded nation centered in the file.
gitimate son of Kentucky horse thief
But q few more words, illustrious Presi-
dent, and be is gone-done gone.
Elevated by their sufferings and suffrages
to the highest Office in the gift of great and
exceeding free people, you have held position
without change of base, or purpose of any
sort, through weary months of war, and want,
and woe; and though every conscript would
unite with the thousands of loyal and true
men of the South in grand old grief at your
downfall, SO too will they sink under the ca.
lamity of an exquisite joy, when you shall
have reached that eminent meridian whence
all progress is perpendicular.
And now, bastard President Of political
abortion. farewell ="
Scalp hunter" relic, pole and chivalrous
,onfederates in crime, goodbye. Except it
1e in the army of the Union, you will not
igain see the conscript
Norm. HAROLD,
Of Ashe county, N. C.