The Russellville Democrat., 1891-05-28
GATH
Albert Pike's Last Days Spent in Hunting
 Up a Possible Connection
Between tie Masonry of the United States
 and Europe.

Washington. heard of this man in my boyhood with feeling of super stition. In the days before slavery ended every thing and everybody south of Mason and Dixon's line was described in violent phrase so that their heroes appeared to be ten feet high. Among the saiti heroes was Albert Pike, about whom I had not the least coherent notion. When people are described as always fight ing, always poetical, etc, they at least cease to be understood. The war being over, however, met Gen. Pike and saw in him the type of many another Northern man. What distinguished him in the South was the possession of intellect and faculty. His real busi- ness I suspect to have been getting excessive fees out of the Indian na- tions which had been placed in the Indian Territory through the feeble ness of will and purpose of President Andrew Jackson. We made treaties with the Cherokees and other h. dians, and the supreme court af- firmed their legitimacy, but the state of Georgia, which had ram pant governor of the fool sort, threatened the United States with a conflict, and President Jackson was at that time concerned in various silly crusades of his own as against the money and savings and fnanciering of the country. Though he was called the iron hearted Jackson, he took pains to advise the well-dis- posed Indian chieftains to get out of Georgia and not have fight there for what was properly their own with the state authorities. The poor h. dians, under the leadership of Boudi- not and Ridge, accepted the enforced terms of the state and government, and took steamers on the Tennessee waters for the Missouri river and were put down not far from Little Rock. In the course of time the Indians, who would not surrender their magnificent domain to the bull dozers of Georgia, followed en- forcedly, and they began to murder the peaceable Indians who had taken President Jackson's advice. This murder of the Ridge and Boudinot families went on for some time, and was rataliated for by the mur- der of the Rosses. I went to Washington city to study civil affairs about 1867-8, and was much sur prised to find myself at that early date sitting with Albert Pike in his library ,and having Chief Ross, of the Cherokee Nation, in my own little library, to tell me how things were going in that region, so little un- derstood at the time. I had thirst for knowledge about the territories and topography of the interior of our country, and remember 8 newspaper published at Chicago expressing in an editorial it's satisfaction at know iug for tbe first time SO much about the Indian Territory as Chief Ross, of the Cherokees, had related to me. The United States might have been a very great government, and has been most successful nation under ex- isting facts; our fountain of govern ment was poisoned about the time the French revolution commenced. Had we exerted the national example through the length and breadth of of this country we would probably have been polite and tolerant fam fly among the nations os men. But we left each of the provinces, territories or states under the dominion of their local satraps, and the philosophy which was taught to them at the close of the eighteenth century was that they would be much greater persons and peoples to dis pute with their government than to welcome it as the benignant provi- dence over all. Arkansas has heen one of the states which has suffered greatly from the want of the Federal fireside and council fires planted in the midst of them. Albert Pike, who was born, think, at Newbury. port, Mass, went to Arkansas with his traditions fixed. He became Whig.
 Around tim were galaxy of ex- cellent meD, and among them, l think was the late Attorney General Garland. But in this country, and especially in the remote districts or states, men grow tired of fighting in favor of high ideal, which cannot appear iH the Godhood of those poor frontiersmen with their ignorance and dirt and mud and squsbbes.
 In the prosecution of their aims the Scottish Kings, who were the federalists of Scotland, frequently were put 10 deatb by their wretched subjects. One of them was hunted into his palace by myrmidon of the character of the James boys, and he got down under the floor and there was pursued, but Killed about two of his assassins, but the third one got him under, and when the king of the whole country cried for mercy this miserable wretch said back 10 him: ''No mercy shalt thou get but this good blade," and he stabbed his king through and through. Another Scottish king, coming back from his defeat on some battle. field, otnnpad af o houoo and an.oa .x,a,,