sincere wishes for your welfare,

R. P. C.

(Private.)

This letter came from the Herald, Times, and Tribune offices, and was the result of the deliberations of Bennett, Greeley, and Raymond, through their Secretaries, Hudson, Dana, and Tuthill. My heart was moved while reading this production. The genial spirits of Houston and Hamilton, of the Herald, and of the equally meritorious dead in the Times and Tribune establishments, passed before my vision, and I was unmanly, and wept like a delicate female. And with electric flights of the imagination, I grasped the long and happy years I have passed in the Herald, Times, and Tribune offices, in the pleasing effort to improve the Fire and Police Departments. I thought, too, of the noble band of intellectual living giants connected with the Metropolitan Press in question, and I wept to know that we would be less friendly, and that my form and intellect were never more to be reflected by the leading Press of America. And why must this be so? Why must I pass in silence, in my whole journey to the grave, such men as Bennett, Greeley, and Raymond, and their Secretaries, Hudson, Dana, and Tuthill? Is it because they have not noticed the Alligator? I would despise myself, if I could be governed by so mean a motive. A spark will light a flame that will defy a million men. Isolated snow will come silently from Heaven, and form mountains that will bury thousands. And I admit that after my gratuitous labors in the Herald, Times, and Tribune establishments for so many years, (in which I devoted the integrity and education that my father gave me,) the refusal of Bennett, Greeley, and Raymond to notice my feeble efforts to establish a truthful press, kindled a blaze in my bosom that they can never quench. For seven weeks I looked with solicitude for the mention of my Journal in their columns, and crushed to the earth with pain and disgust with my species, I resolved to dissect the bodies that were animated by such contracted souls. Their refusal to notice and encourage the efforts of an old and tried friend like me, (who has toiled so long and hard to give them important public documents and early valuable domestic and foreign intelligence,) aroused a million demons that have slumbered in my bosom, and yearned for years to expose the villainy of American editors, who hold the destinies of my country and of human liberty in their palms, and who trifle and play with the people, and sell them like cattle in the face of the morning sun. Bennett, Greeley, and Raymond never meet by daylight, but they do by night light in great emergencies. They fret and scold before the people, but they act in concert in subterranean caverns. And their Secretaries, Hudson, Dana, and Tuthill, daily walk arm-in-arm, plotting deeds of hell for their wicked masters, in which the people are invariably sold. And so with the money-article writers of these public journals. They see each other often, and act in concert, and spread terror in Wall street, and throughout the country, and desolate the hearth of many a happy domestic circle, in the journey of every sun. And shall I be silent, and go down to my grave, with these fatal secrets on my heart, that have depressed me for years? Shall I be recreant to my mission, and to the toiling millions, on whom their accursed treason falls? Shall I not tell the American people, that the evils and corruption that overshadow our land, and threaten to subvert our glorious institutions, have their source in the American Press? And shall I not adduce my proof and argument, and scathing analysis of their pernicious motives? And shall I be silenced by the threats in this letter, that I will be crushed by three Leviathans the instant I open my fatal batteries? No, no. All hell shall not deter me from my exposition of Bennett, Greeley, and Raymond, and their vile Secretaries. For my honor I care every thing, and he who strives to deprive me of it, through unmerited detraction, shall die by my avenging hand. But for life I care nothing, only to be useful to my kind, and to adhere to integrity, and serve the God of my supreme adoration. Life! Take it! Take the poor, trembling, pining, mortal trunk and scabbard, but beware of the sword and soul! Look, but touch not them, lest the ground rock, and open, and yawn, and swallow, and cut, and dash, and burn your demon bones and nerves through undying ages. Beware! I say! O beware! and tremble! For I have a superstition, that a soul is sacred in the eyes of God, according to its love of truth, or its hatred and horror of such hypocrites, thieves, and traitors, as Bennett, Greeley, and Raymond.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1857, by
STEPHEN H. BRANCH,
In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the United
States for the Southern District of New York.

c9

Life of Stephen H. Branch.

The news of my return to Providence spread rapidly, and the political newspapers unfriendly to father most cruelly announced my arrival in blazing capitals. I then told my father that if he would furnish me the means, I would go to the sea shore, and he instantly complied. I departed for Boston with White, whose father resided in Pepperell, Massachusetts, whither he went, and I took the stage to Salem and Gloucester, near Cape Ann. When I parted with White, I was overwhelmed with tears and desolation. I passed the first night in Gloucester at a hotel, and the next day engaged private board. I now was very lonely,—had no congenial spirit by my side,—knew no one in Gloucester,—was a mere skeleton,—could not read nor compose, without suffusing my brain with blood, and I sometimes thought I should drop dead, and seriously contemplated self-destruction. But the ocean air revived me, and I gave lessons in penmanship to a Mr. Story and his two sons, who gave me $5 a week, which defrayed my expenses, and diverted my mind from the melancholy past, which was a precious solace. The summer closed, and the leaves began to fall, and the first blast of autumn made its advent from the north, and I returned to Boston, and went to New York by way of Hartford and New Haven. I engaged board with Mrs. Reeve, in Pearl street, near Franklin Square, and hired a cheap piano of Firth, Hall, & Pond, and gave English lessons to the son of Mr. Vultee, for which he imparted musical instruction. I then went to Arthur Tappan, and informed him that I contemplated the instruction of colored persons, who sent me to his brother, Lewis Tappan, with whom I had a long conversation, at his store in Pearl street, during which he examined my qualifications in spelling, reading, figures, and penmanship, and gave me a letter of introduction to a colored man named Van Ransselaer, who kept a restaurant under the office of the Journal of Commerce. I taught Mr. and Mrs. Van Ransselaer and their adopted boy for some weeks, for which I received my meals at their restaurant. They had a room in the sixth story of one of the Wall street buildings, and, in climbing the stairs, I often thought I should die before I reached the upper story. I now see an advertisement, and obtain a situation as teacher on the plantation of Mr. Bennett, near Franklin, Alabama, and departed for Apalachicola, in the brig Sampson, Captain Robinson. The passengers could scarcely move in consequence of the barrels of potatoes and apples on deck. We paid our passage in advance. The proprietors of the vessel allowed the captain a limited sum for sailors, and, to save a portion of the money for himself, the captain obtained most of his sailors from the hospital, from those just recovering from protracted illness. One was lame, and another had but one eye, and all were pale and extremely feeble. We had a gale off Cape Hatteras, and some of