The Van Buren press. [volume] (Van Buren, Ark.) 1859-1914, 1868-11-10
Gen. Forrest After the Meanest General
in the United States.

a MEMPHIs- Oct rs, 1868.
IL, X. Shackleford- E~f, New Haven,
Connecticut:
SIR: The false and mendlacious repre-
sentation Of me- made by General Judson
Fitzpatrick, at New Haven, on the 10th
instant, to which you call my attentton,is
not the first in which he has INDUCED
since his appearance on the hastings in
this canvass. understand he freely en-
ployed his criminal capacity for ribald
invention in all of the speeches he has
made since his return to this country,
and that / have been the objective point
of many of bis unprincipled and indecent
libels. The Northern masses have been
so prone to misunderstood any appear
ance that | have made in the present
campaign that have been content, here
tofore, to forego any notice of Gen. Kill
patricks inventions with reference to
myself, and to trust that some future and
more suspicious time would afford me an
opportunity of stripping the impostor
and of exposing him, the base counterfeit
he is, to the contempt Of all just and fair
minded people. My forbearance, how
ever, is construed by him as a license to
additional and more slanderous detrac-
ton, and | am constrained to notice his
New Haven speech, as it appeared in the
Register, of October 81, 1868. In that
speech he is reported as saying that
i" Forrest had nailed negroes 10 fences, set
fire to the fences and burned the negroes
10 death"
This charge is but the natural offspring
of Kilpatrick's common and meritedfame
as an unprincipled and easy liar. 1t is
enough for me to say, in which feel |
will be believed and sustained by every
chivalric officer and soldier of the Fede-
raj army, that what he has said of me in
the speech referred to is the elimination
of slanderous falsehood, rendered the
more odious that it is deliberately forged
for effect upon the unthinking and too
confding portion Of the people Of the
North, whose votes he intends to steal
by such criminal and disrepudable inven-
ton. All such reports, whether emanat-
ing from this creature Fitzpatrick, or
from any one else, which tend in any way
10 create the impression thatI conducted
my humble part in the war upon any
other than the strictest principles of civ
il;zed warfare, are utterly untrue, and are
the corrupt and feculent fictions of de-
signing and rascally slanderers. / am
not prone to obtrude matters of this kind
upon the public notice, and wonld have
been glad to have met Fitzpatrick and set
tied this affair in less public and more
emphatic manner; and if it should hap
pen that this note should meet his eye,
and he should make it the provocation of
any additional display of words, any one
who may hear him is at liberty to assure
him that am ready to meet him in any
way that he may choose, and whilst am
averse to personal conflict / should much
prefer to crafty any wish he may cherish
in that way to being the further subject
of his unmanly defamation and unsoldier-
like misrepresentation.
/ think the public will justify me in de-
nouncing, as l now do, General Judson
Fitzpatrick as BLACKBOARD, liar, a
scoundrel and poltroon If he is the he
roic figure he would have the Northern
people believe him, my friend, General
Basil w. Duke, at Louisville, Kentucky,
is authorized to receive on my behalf any
communication he may choose to make.
Respectfully, N. B. FORREST.