Year: 1876


The Mystery of Gen. Hindman's Death


[From the New York world.l


Murder will out. To that we have
the testimony of the records, and the
axiom has been formulated by the great
est of American orators. Not only does
the body of the victim, voiceless except
through gaping wounds, cly out for
Christian sepulture from the depths of
swamp or lonely copse where the MUIR
derer has vainly hoped to hide the wit
ness to his crime, but the wretch him.
self, hurrying from bloody act to blood
ier and still more cruel deeds, reaches
such height of reckless daring that
the blindest Justice cannot help but
close about him. Then the gallows
comes, and then, with no hope for the
future and late repentance for the past,
he tells the story of his crimes. Mys-
teries of blood at last are understood !;
mayhap the memory of an innocent man
is cleared of stain, and one death is
made to pay the penalty of many. In
the newspaper of every day these coin
cidences of fate are told. We have two
of them before us as we write. With a
prescience Of the coming massacre be-
lOlC hAAi, PCl lhdpoy a. oOlNilCl Va OQotCi .
army wrote out the narrative of q muir
der committed long years before, which,
from the obscurity of the victim or the
disorder of the times, had never been
traced to its author. Before the letter
was read in the Southern town where
the crime had almost passed from recol-
lection, the murderer lay in that horri-
BILE ravine, retribution coming from saw
age hands, but the criminal dying in
brave company, and as one OF noble
band whose names will be bright in
history. But of those who went down
to slaughter that fatal June day, we may
suppose that to one death was welcome
relief from the barbs of conscience.
His crime drove him from the comforts
Of home through fourteen years of
wandering, and finally to terrible death
on the far-off plains. His uneasy spirit
forced him to confession of the for
gotten murder, and at last the molder-
ing corpse in Tennessee grave had its
revenge in mutilated body in the lands
of the Sioux.


Gen. Thomas c. Hindman was q
Major General in the Confederate army.
After the war he returned to his home,
near Helena, Ark, and, a few years
later, the community and the entire
South were shocked to hear of his
brutal assassination while surrounded
by his wife and children. Sitting in
his library one night, gun was forced
through the window, and the soldier
who had escaped from hundred bat
ties fell dead from his chair, his body
riddled with bullets. The murder was
commonly ascribed to private enmity,
and q reputable citizen of Helena has
since borne the load Of terrible suspi-
cion, which the confession of the real
criminal has but now removed. The
mails bring us the account of a gallows
scene at Rome, in Georgia, wherein, by
the statement of the condemned, the
mystery of Hindman's death at last is
solved. Haywood Grant, colored, COLI
victed of arson and sentenced to be
hanged, and with the moose about to be
placed around his neck, called the
Sheriff to him and confessed to the mur-
der of two steamboat hands on q Missis-
sippi river steamboat, ten years ago /;
then to the murder of an Irishman i'll
Memphis during the same year and
still again to the murder of policeman
near to the spot where the third of his
murders had been committed, and
closed the dismal catalogue by detailing
the manner in which he had shot to
death the Confederate General in his
Arkansas home. No cause was given for
the crime. and moment later the
wretch was swung off into eternity.
Not so soon, however, but that an in
nocent man was relieved of suspicion
which was not so strongly supported by
facts as to bring him to the felon's
dock, but which, except that the law
had dragged the real criminal to his
fate, would have followed him to his
grave and have been left as an evil her
itage to his children. Justice, though
tardy, had asserted itself, and the crime
of the murderer had found voice.


The names of the murdered Hind
man may now rest in peace, for the law
of retribution has been fulfilled on the
scaffold of that Georgia town.


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