The Wheeling daily register. [volume] (Wheeling, W. Va.) 1864-1878, 1868-10-16
The Difference in Doing Things-
massachnsefts and MississiPpi.
From the vicksburg Times, Oct. I.

| FROM the flcksDurg Ilmes, OcI' 81
A short time ago the pious people oi
Manchester, Mass, became indignant
with a man and woman, who were al
legged to be living in violation of the
laws of God and society, took them from
their bed at night, aud, after stripplne
and maltreating them in divers ways,
bestowed upon them coat of tar and
feathers! A number of elegant and &C
complished women of Manchester par
ticipated in this lady-like amusement
though it is extremely probable that II
the test prescribed by our Saviour, Oh
an occasion when frail women was
complained of, had been suggested al
the Manchester proceeding, there would
have been no tar and feathers, or, Il
used, the parties who assumed to pun
ish the guilty would themselves have
been the victims!
More recently, gay Lothario from
the city of New York, took up his abode
on Long Island, with frail represen'
tative of the softer sex, to whom the
church had not allied him. The NOR.
ais of the Long Island saints were very
much shocked, and they took Lothario
frem his bed at night, thrashed him
souhdly, and then starred and feathered
him! Now the communities of Massa'
chusetts and Long Island are eminently
"loyal' as we'll as pieus, and such
things as "rebels," TRAITORS" and
"slave drivers" are unknown, and con-
sequently it was not deemed necessary
to declare martial law, to suspend the
writ of habeas corpus, to convene a
Military Commission, (expressly to con-
vict,) or to send any one to the peniten-
tiary Indeed, we do not see that the
parties in Manchester and at Long Isl
land have been punished in any man
ner or even prosecuted! 1t may be
that such affairs are 80 common in those
favored abodes of the worshippers of
"God and humanity" that they attract
no attention and require no punish
ment. 1t may be that the piety of
Massachusetts, is assuming holier and
more merciful and genial character, for
while the stern Puritans of other days
burned witches and tortured Baptists,
their more enlightened descendants,
thoroughly imbued with the "higher
law" of "God and morality ideas," are
content to punish adulterers with tar
and feathers instead of the fagot and
the horse-pond!
But we write not to complain of the
good people of Long Island and Massa-
chusetts, to reproach the laxity of their
laws, or the inefficiency of their magis-
trates. Far be such n purpose from us
We are too we'll advised of the immacu-
late purity of the first, the stringency
of the second, and the stern fidelity of
the third, to indulge in idle reproaches
or unjust cayilings. But, while we do
ample justice to the "loil" saints of the
localities we have named, we hope it
is not rebellious or reasonable to say
hoW much better we managed such
things in the unreconstructed State of
Mississippi If there are any who
doubt this assertion, we advise them to
read the document from the headquar-
ters of General Gillem, which we pub
lish in another column. For the alleged
crimes of using some tar on white
skinned negro teacher, who has mar
ried a negro wife, and boasts that her
charms are equal, if not superior 20 the
loveliest in the land, military COM
mission has just sentenced Messrs. Nc
Ilwaine and Hewitt to the penitentiary,
at hard labor, for one year. This SEN
tence has been approved by Brevet
Major General Gillem, and we suppose
that Messrs. McIlwaine and Hewitt WIN
soon be duly forwarded under guard to
Jackson, to enter upon their term OF
service.
We have not the space or the heart,
this morning, to speak of the sentence
of this military tribunal as it deserves,
and we defer the indignant comments
which naturally spring from the heart
to the lips. When we have more leis-
ure, and are more fully in possession of
the facts, we may show with what IA
cility men can be declared guilty by a
commission "organized to convict"