The daily phoenix. [volume] (Columbia, S.C.) 1865-1878, 1867-05-28

extract:
BY THESE PRESENTS GREETING:
To Messrs. George W Blunt, John A.
Kennedy, and forty others, members
of the Union League Club.
GENTLEMEN: I was favored, on
the 10th instant. by ON official
note from our ever-courteous Pre-
sident, John Jay, notifying me
that q requisition had been presented
to him for so special meeting of the
club, at an early day, for the purpose
of taking into consideration the con
duct of Horace Greeley, q member of
the club, who has become bonds
man for Jefferson Davis, latc chief
officer of the rebel Government"
Mr.. Greeley then quotes from the
Tribune, to show that, from the day
of General Lees surrender, to the
day of the assassination of Lincoln,
he had advocated clemency and for
giveness towards the 'ex-rebels. ~
That appalling calamity, he goes
on to say, seemed in an instant to
curdle oil the milk of human kind
ness i'll twenty millions of American
breasts. at once, insidious efforts
were set on foot to turn the fury thus
engendered against me, because of
my pertinacious advocacy of mercy
to the vanquished. CHANGING to enter
the clubhouse the next Saturday
evening, L received full broadside
of your scowls, ere we listened to n
clerical harangue, intended to provo
that Mr.. Lincoln had been Drovi-
dentially removed because of his no.
torious leanings to clemency, i'll order
to make way for n successor who
would give the rebels full measure
of stern justice. I was soon made
to comprehend that 1 had no sympa-
thlzers-or none who dared seem
such-in your crowded asscmblage.
And some maladroit ndmirer having,
few days nfterward, made the club
n present of my portrait, its bare re-
ception was resisted in u speech from
the chair by your then PRESIDENT
speech whose vigorous invective was
justified solely by my plcadings for
lenity to the rebels.
At once, howl OF derision and
rage was sent up from every side
against me by the little creatures
whom God, for some inscrutablc pur-
pose, permits to edit majority of
our minor journals, echoed by a yell
of Stop my paper!' from thousands
of imperfectly instructed readers OF
the Tribune. One impudent puppy
wrote me to answer, catcgorically,
whether L WIS or was not in favor of
hanging JEFF. Davis, adding that I
must stop his paper, if I were not!
Scores volunteered assurances that I
was defying public opinion-that
most Of my readers were against me-
as if could be induced to write what
they wished said rather than what
they needed to be told. Y
Gentlemen, 1 shall not attend your
meeting this evening. I have an en-
gagement out of town, and shall keep
it. do not recognize you rs capa-
BILE of Judging or even fully appre-
hending me. You evidently regard
me as weak sentimentalist, misled
by maudlin philosophy. arraign
you as nd,rop-mintled blochheads, ,cIo
acould like TO be useful to a great and
good cause, bit d0nt &no,o how. Your
attempt to base n great, enduring
party on the hate and wrath necessa.
rily engendered by bloody civil war
is as though you should plant q CO.
lony on an iceberg which had some
how drifted into tropical ocean. 1
tell you, here, that, out of q life ear
nestly devoted to the good of human
kind, yonr children will select NV
going to Richmond and signing that
bail-bond as the wisest act, and will
feel that it did more for freedom and
humanity than all Of you were COM
petent to do, though you had lived
to the age of Methuseiah.
| ask nothing of you, then, but that
you proceed to your end by O direct,
frank, manly way. Don't slide off
into mild resolution of censure. but
move the expulsion which you pur
posed, and which deserve, if I de-
serve any reproach whatever. All I
care for is, that you make this n
square. stand-up fight, and record
your Judgment by yeas and nays. L
care not how many vote with me, nor
how many vote against me; for T
know that the latter will repent it in
dust and ashes before three years
have passed. Understand, once for
all, that dare you and defy you, and
that l propose to fight it out on the
line that I have held from the day of
Lees surrender. X
[ give you fair notice that T shall
urge the northumberland of +boeo