Cleveland daily leader. [volume] ([Cleveland, Ohio]) 1865-1873, 1866-02-16
WHO TIE DEFENDANT Is

does 10 pOlLicS.
WHO THE DEFENDANT Is
During the war, Colburn was chief of
the army correspondents of the World in
tho West, and acquired considerable epu
tation as an able, spirited, and trustworthy
writer. On the night of March 3, 1864,
in company with Messrs. Richardson and
Browne, of the Tri6unS he started on a
steam tug, to run the gauntlet OF the rebel
batteries at Vicksburg, to enable him to
reach Grants headquarters at Grand Gulf,
forty miles below, where the great cam-
paign against Pemberton had Just begun.
The expedition proved disastrous. After
being exposed to the enemys fire for
nearly an hour, q rebel shot exploded and
sank the tug, burned two barges of hay
accompanying it, and the surviving pas
sengers were compelled to take to the
water. OF thirty-fVe persons who started
in the expedition, ten we're killed, and
more either wounded or sealded.
Only sixteen, less than halt of the whole,
reached the shore unframed but the
three adventurous journalists were among
the number, though they lost nearly all
their clothing, and entered the COnfed-
eracy almost in puris naturalibus. The
Vicksburg rebels treated them kindly, and
paroled them to 60 North, via Richmond.
INTERVIEW BETWEEN eoLBURN AND
STEWART.
At the time of writing the letter, Col
burn had never had any relation with
Stewart, and did not even know him by
sight. After, it appeared, learning that
Stewart felt agrieved, he called upon him
to say that whatever he had written had
been done h~urriedly, under the pressure of
daily duty; that he had come to talk
frankly with him on the subject, and if he
had done him wrong to repair it as far as
possible. Stewart replied to him with
great bitterness and vindictiveness, de-
Ginning to discuss the subject, and stating
his determination to press the matter in
the courts. Thereupon Colburn responded
hat if such was his wish he should Ger
tainly be met there, and so the novel in
terview ended.
eoLgURE's ARREsE
The same evening Colburn was arrested
on Stewa-t's affidavit, charged with mali
cious libel-a criminal, not q civil pro-
ceeding. By adroN management, the
warrant was served up0n him after four
o'clock in the evening, subsequent to the
adjournment of all the courts, so that he
could not possibly give bail, but must
spend that night in the station-house. Mr..
II. H. Rice, one of Stewards attorneys,
accompanied the officer who served the
writ-a seeming indication that it WIS de
ternined to subject Colburn to the indig-
nifty of spending the night in the station
hpnsa in thu an manu- Of fhTarau pr.1t5
tutes and drunkards. He was subjected
to that indignity; but the Bohemian who
had cheerily supped on a cracker, and
slept in the mud at Fort Donelson, tested
at the filth of the Vicksburg jail, and
serenely smiled among the horrors of
Libby Prison, seems to have enjoyed the
experience; for, under the caption of "A
Night in Prison." he contributes to last
evenings Tribune az amusing and minute
account of the statiOR-hOuse and his fell
low-prisoners. With the journalistic pas
sion strong to the last, he says.
al thought of the great world of vice,
and sin, and passion which underlies a
great city, almost unobserved by any save
the police. My mind ran back to prison
and prison literature. l thought
of the dungeons of Venice, the Tower of
London, the Black Hole of Calcutta, the
Bastile, the Marshelsea, and a hundred
! recalled how Iasso, Cervantes,
Raleigh. Sidney, had made their pri-
constitutes immortal; how Voltaire had
adorned the walls of his prison with
an epic; how Bunyan, Goldsmith, and
Fielding, Savage, Sheridan, and Leigh
Hunt and their colleagues, were not al
ways successful in lodging the bailiff's
and how the heroic Hampden fell
how Toussiant had expired in his cell, to
be followed years after By his great muir
lerer; and finally, in our own time, how
.he walls of Clichy honored themselves,
md gave new inspiration and force to Mr..
Greeley himself. 1 passed in review the
heroes of p~rison-life in song and story, not
forgetting the Prisoner of Chillon, Jean
Vatican, and the case of the individual
who spent his life in Jail, and, when re-
eased, found liberty so insupportable that
ne begged TO be allowed 10 die, as he had
lived, in a cell. We have, however, no
iuch genteel Houses of Arrest, as Thacke-
describes. American democracy ex-
ends even to its prisons"
THE WAR A PROMISING ONE.
Mr.. Knapp, proprietor of the st. Louis
Republican, also arrested for publishing
he letter, made in court an apology and
'etraction of the most abject and humil-
ating nature. 1t is whispered, too, that
required of Greeley that no man
Who could write such letters touching him
hould be allowed to remain on the Iri-
that Mr.. Greeley submitted to this
lictation, and that, in accordance with
lis suggestion, Colburn has resigned his
on that paper. But Colburn APP
Years to like the war into which he has
zen drawn. While Stewart seems bent
sending him to the Penitentiary, he
pparently means to justify before the
ury, and try to prove the allegations of
lis letter. The trial promises to be unu-
raey, both in its bearing upon the
of libel and the character of n of
ur most prominent citizens.