Belmont chronicle. [volume] (St. Clairsville, Ohio) 1855-1973, 1888-05-24
THRILLING EXPERIENCE

!.
D. MANN's REQUEST FOR INFORMATION
AND THE sCATIIING SHAPE IN WHICH
HE GOT IT.
Washington Special, May 10.
The following letter from Hon. W. D.
Kelly, in regard to his Mobile experience
in 1867 presents some interesting history,
and has cutting edges:
HOUSE OF REPREsENTATIvEs,U U. s.,
WASHINGTON, D. c., April %, 1888.
". D. MaRn, NelO York Hotel, ". Y.
Among the many letters found upon
my table this morning, after an absence
of three days from the city, is one from
! you which reads as follows:
Hon. ". d. KelEy, Washington, D. C..
. SIR find in the Mobile Daily Register
of Wednesday, the 2lst inst. what pur-
ports to be Washington dispatch, from
which l extract as follows:
"Judge W. d. Kelley, well known as
Pig-iron Kelley, looks fifteen years young
er than his age. He seems to get thinner
as he gets older, but his color is good and
his hand steady, his foot light, and his hair
still holds its native brown. Yes, l am
very well for aman who has been through
as much as | have he said. | once was
| shot, and more than once had sixty shots
| fired at me- The latter happened, you
know, in whati known as the Kelley riot,
| in Mobile, Ala, in 1861, under Andy John
son. While speaking there | was attack
ed by very bad lot of carpet t-baggers,
marshaled and led on by cut-thrOat
whose name is now well known in con-
nectiOn with patent car. He meant to
kill me. The platform was swept by the
bullets of the aSSaSSins, and several men
were slain by my side. 1t was fearful
scene, and that villain was solely respOn-
sible for it. Last year, when at West
Point, he drove around in a stylish rig,
and l scattered him every time by simply
moving toward him when he stopped
As soon as he saw me he whipped up and
took a new position every time. He was
evidently very uncomfortable, fearing
that | might speak to him, or perhaps
that | would expose him to the crowd
| would not like to harbOr in my breast
that Wretch'S conscience"
VIII you be so good as to inform me if
you are correctly quoted above or not, as
there can be no question that l am the
person alluded to.
Respectfully, W. d. MANN.
You are not mistaken in suppOsing
that you are the person to whom I al
luded in the course of a conversation
with Mr.. Croffutt, who is, l suppose, the
author of the communication to which
you refer. The facts touching the Mo
bile riot set forth in that communication,
both as to the danger in which 1 was
involved, the wounding and killing of
others, and your responsibility for that
riot, and its terrible results, are substan-
TALLY correct. l am, however, not re-
sponsible for the language used by the
reporter of the interview. / did not, as
he represents, limit the number of shots
fired at me to sixty. They must have
exceeded a hundred, and l said that
when the military authorities on the next
morning examined the plastered wall in
front of which l was speaking, when
your creatures opened fire on me, they
found sixty-fve distinct bullet marks
and several abrasions, which had, they
believed, been made by bullets. 1 did
not apply the term cut-throat and villain
to you, as am not in the habit of using
such epithets. But looking back through
vista of nearly twenty-one years, and
contemplating the infamous means to
which you resorted to produce that riot,
l felt that if those epithets were ever
deserved by a man l might well have
applied them to you.
|. You have not been quick, Colonel
Mann, to discover the terrible character
of the charge you invited when, on the
approach to Mobile of the late Henry
Wilson, of Massachusetts, and myself,
not together, but by different routes,
and on successive days, neither knowing
of the others intention to visit Mobile
at the time, you, in the columns of the
Mobile Times, the infamous sheet you
owned, and responsibility for whose ut
terances you avowed in the parlor at the
Battle House, in the presence of repre-
sentatives of the Ne1O York Herald, Phil
ddelphid Inquirer and the Cincinnati
Commercial, announced that two North
ern agitators were coming to Mobile,
and Immediately advised the people of
that city to treat them with Indifference
by ignoring them entirely. Those who
knew the character of your sheet and its
readers interpreted this paragraph as an
invitation to personal violence, and in
duced Senator Wilson to leave Mobile
without delivering the address he had
been invited to make. He left the city
before l arrived, and as l remained you
determined to effect my banishment or
assassination, and in the Times of the
morning of the day on which was to
speak kmisrepresentedm my nativity and the
faith which had characterized my ances-
tors from long before the days when, in
1864, they sailed up the Delaware and
settled at Salem, n. J. In an inflam-
matory paragraph you said that though
| was an apostate from my faith and
my party, and recreant to my country
and my God, you hoped the people of
Mobile would not serve me as the peo-
pie of Boston had served an Irish Cath
olic Deputy Marshal, whom they had
found in the act of executing an order
of the L. S. court by conducting slave
to its owner, and who in their wild fury,
they tore limb from limb on Boston
Common"
Colonel W. d. Mann, you are mistak-
en- in supposing that the gentlemen who
were in my room when you visited me
are dead. Nearly twenty-one years have
elapsed, but some of them live to bear
witness that you admitted the falsity of
hau Oh Nn,x O. 1I,n I,.,, NIorc 4.