The Bolivar bulletin. [volume] (Bolivar, Hardeman County, Tenn.) 1865-1888, 1872-09-06
NUMBER A.
ARrare and Manly Letter.


Extract from Mr. Greeley's letter to
the club in which it was proposed to
/ censure him for signing Mr.. Davis's bail
bond
| From the New York Tribune, AIaya23. 1867.
By these Presents Greeting To Messrs.
/ George ". Blunt, John A. Kennedy.
John o. Stone, Stephen Hyatt, and
thirty others, members of the Union
League Club:
Genaemey1-I was favored on the 18th
inst, by an official note from our ever
courteous President, John Jay, notify
ing me that a requisition had been pre-
/ sented to him for '' a special meeting of
the club, at an early day, for the pur
pose of taking into consideration the
conduct of Horace Greeley, a member
of the club, who has become a bonds
man for Jefferson Davis, late chief Offi-
Ger of the Rebel Government.
Gentlemen, [ shall not attend your
| meeting this evening. 1 have an en-
gagement out of town, and shall keep it.
do not recognize you as capable of
/ Judging, or even fully apprehending
me. You evidently regard me as a weak
sentimentalist, misled by a maudlin
philosophy.
I arraign you as narrow-minded
bIockheads, who would like to be useful
a great and good cause, but don't
gnOw how. Your attempt to base a
reat, enduring party on the hate and
wrath necessarily engendered by q
| bIoodycivil war, is as though youshOUld
plant colony on an iceberg which had
| somehow drifted into tropical ocean.
I tell you here that, out of a life ear
nestly devoted to the good of human
kind, your children viii select my going
to Richmond and signing that bail bond
as the wisest act, and VIII feel that 1t
| did more for freedom and humanity
than all of you were competent to do
though you had lived to the age of Me-
thuselah.
/ ask nothing of you, then, but that
you proceed to your end by a direct,
frank, manly way. Don't slide off into
a mild resolution of censure, but move
the expulsion which you proposed, and
which I deserve, if deserve any re-
proach whatever. All care for Is, that
| you make this a square, stand~up fight,
| and record your judgment by yeas and
| nays. care not how few vote with me,
nor how many vote against me; for ]
know that the latter will repent 1t in
/ dust and ashes before three years have
/ past. Understand, once for all, that /
dare you and defy you, and that / pro-
| pose to fight it out on the line that j
| have held from the day of Lees surren-
| der. So long rs any man was seeking
| to overthrow our Government he was
my enemy from the hour in which he
/ laid down his arms he was my formerly
erring countryman.
| So long as any is at heart opposed to
| the national unity, the Federal author
| ity, or to that assertion to the equal
rights of all men which has become
practically identified with loyalty and
nationality, I shall do my best to de-
prive him of power; but whenever lie
/ ceases to be thus, I demand his resto-
ration to all the privileges of American
/ citizenship. I give you fair notice that
I shall nrge the e-enfranchisement of
1 those now prescribed for rebellion SO
/ soon as I shall feel confident that this
1 course is consistent with the freedom Of
| the blacks and the unity ofthe republic,
| and that shall demand a recall of all
| now in exile only for participating in
/ the rebellion whenever the country shall
have been so thoroughly pacifed that
ITS safety viii not thereby be endan-
| gered.
And so, gentlemen hoping that you
/ will henceforth comprehend me some
| what better than you have done, 1 re-
| main yours, HORACE GREELEY.
New York, May %, 1867.