Nevada County picayune., 1890-12-18


 so good a man as Hon. Jas. k.
 Jones.
 As to the "scrop," giving MT.
 Fishhack' s war record. We get it
 from public document, (Senatc
 No. 129, 3Sth Congress lst Session)
 "lctter of Wm. NJ. Fishback, to
 Hon. Jas. II. Lane, giving detail-
 ed account of his conduct during the
 rebellion" etc., written June 16,
 1864. Any one can get it in full by
 writing to your congressman, giving 1 No. of document as above. And
 here we will say friend handed us
 copy of it-Senator Jones did not send it to us, and we are not pub i fishing this as a paid advertise
 ment, as Mir. Fishback has had
 many sketches, etc., so published, 1 lately. The document or letter IS
 too lengthy for Us to reproduce en-
 tire, hence we say, parties that wish ! to see if in full can write and get It. ! It seems MT. Fishback was elected 1 to the L. $. Senate from this State | in 1864. and that body refused to
 seat him, charging to him disloyalty in the "rebellion, when Lane, the Kansas South hater, defended him,
 which called out this letter, ill which
 he starts out with the following:
 Early in January, 1861, the rebels
 began to get up meetings Tn my county, and rush through them boz
 GUS resolutions, with view to mis- lead the public and to excite se- ccssion furor. l attended every sin gle one of these meetings, (although had to go armcd,) and succeeded at every one in voting down their reasonable and in voting up strong Union resolutions.
 He was elected as member of the State Secession Convention of 1861, | in which he fought secession, but ti- | nally voted for it, as he claims in l thls letter, because he thought his | life in peril if he had not. He tres, in it, at considerable length, to eX- plain his course and prove his '.loy- r alty." Here are some extracts from E his letter, rerbdtim: -...::."-....
 After we had adjourned, the news r of the firing upon Sumpter was an { nounced. Such state of excitement f have never in my life witnessed : elsewhere as followed the announce | ment of that event. Wherever you r met a rebel you met him armed. I E saw IS pistols cooked upon a Union man on that day for the mere eX- E prcssion of loyal sentiment. By a secret preconcert regiments and com i panies tlocked to the governor or | were organized in their counties, be- fore the news had even reached other portions of the State. Their organi- E Zation was astonishingly sudden as it was thorough. 1 had repeatedly and | publicly declared that if the governor | attempted to force us out we would r resist by force ofarms. lnow thought | of carrying those threats into eXccu- | tion. But having relied upon our . numbers, we were without organiza- ton .or concert, or arms, to have | attempted to contend with the thor ough organization of the rebels we soon found would not only be folly, it | would he inhUmdn. ! then for the first time began to real ize the magnitude of the rebell- 1 ion. and at once determined to make | my escape, and to urge the federal army to come to our protection.
 I thought again of escaping to the mountains of my i county, and of rallying the union men for resistance, (for l had so of- ten sand would die before l would ! vote for secession, l dreaded the hu- | initiation almost as much as l hated | the character of such vote.) But 1 the reasons of humanity which induc- ed me to advise aequiescence before i I left home were, HOW that saw the i situation in all It's fearful reality, of double force. So, then, apart from i personal danger, i was induced by motives of humanity to lend q 1 seeming support to the rebellion l so ! much abhorred. Nor was there a single individual in Little Rock then, | or in the State now. who believes that l l would have ever left that convention ! alive if had voted against the ordi- | nance at that session. Nor did that ! vote appease them, for during the entire session l was insulted by la- dies, l mean females who ought to have been ladies' and l was repeat edly admonished by the president of the convention, and by other person al friesds, that my life was far from being out oi danger
 After that vote, ] did not cast