CONTENTS

Volume I.—No. 8.]—— SATURDAY, JUNE 12, 1858.—— [Price 2 Cents.

STEPHEN H. BRANCH’S
ALLIGATOR.

c2

James Gordon Bennett, Horace Greeley, and Henry J. Raymond.

I shall review the editorial career of these men, (whom I regard as extremely vicious,) and I shall begin with Bennett, because he is the eldest and biggest villain of the trio. I have written for the Herald since I was a student at Cambridge in 1836, for which I have received only $250. I have written for the Times nearly since its advent, for which I have received nothing. I have written for the Tribune since the first year of its existence, for which I have received nothing but infinite detraction. So, in all I may say of these ungrateful scoundrels, I shall evince no ingratitude or treachery. Bennett’s face is the reflection of hell and the prince of devils. In conversation, he is obscene and blasphemous, and thoroughly wicked in every thought, and to listen to his obscenity, and blasphemy, and corrupt suggestions, in his old age, makes one shudder with horror to the inner temples of the soul. He is a low and cunning Scotchman, of a large brain, of superficial cultivation—has no critical knowledge of grammar, and his orthography is quite imperfect—could accurately define Websters “science,” only as it represents the mode of extortion—has read very little—is an unnaturalized alien, and a monarchist of the deepest dye. His leading motive, since he acquired his almighty dollar position as a journalist, has been to corrupt the people, and thus subvert our institutions, and cast us again into the embraces of British despots, whom he still loves, and will ever recognize as his native masters. His wife permanently resides in Europe, and the son who bears his name was educated in London, Paris, and Vienna,—and Bennett himself has passed most of his latter years in Europe, with flying visits to America to black mail private citizens and the politicians in our Municipal, State, and National elections. As incontrovertible evidence of his sympathy with corruptionists, he never wrote a syllable in favor of the election of an honorable man to office. In the abstract, he prates of virtue, and has always denounced public rogues as no other man in America, but concretely and in the assassin’s ambush, he toils from choice and for a cash consideration to elect prison birds for our rulers. As long as the candidate for office holds him through a beautiful woman, or will jingle gold before his eyes, he will sustain him, and magnify him into a human god; but the moment she ceases to fondle, and caress, and hug, and kiss his hideous features, or her beauty fades, or her paramour falls through penury, or the loss of the public confidence,—when one or all of these calamities transpire, he seeks new victims, and tramples the old like spiders, as he now does George Law and Fernando Wood, and others, whom he has bled of half a million. And when Mariposa fails to yield its wonted supply of gold, he will abandon Fremont, and support some notorious scamp for President, who is a perjured alien, or a great national plunderer, or a dastard traitor to the Union of our Fathers,—provided the candidate will give him $100,000 in cash, with the promise of a first-class Foreign Mission. There is a married woman alternately in the Metropolis and its suburbs, to whom Bennett has long been an abject slave. And there is a woman alternately in Washington and its suburbs, to whom President Buchanan himself is a Russian serf. Bennett and Buchanan, while I write, are in the embraces of two cunning and bewitching ladies, who control the destinies of America. It was through the fascinations and machinations of these two women, that George Law and Fernando Wood ultimately fell, never to rise; and it was through these two Cleopatras that the English and Jewish alien, Abraham D. Russell and Daniel E. Sickles were elected to the Judiciary and Congress, and will be again, as long as James Buchanan, James Gordon Bennett, Judge Russell, Daniel E. Sickles, and the two lovely ladies in question rule the destinies of the White House, and meet in its gorgeous halls, and around its festive tables. Dan Sickles could pull Buchanan’s nose with impunity, and Judge Russell could pinch Bennett’s big proboscis, and he would not dare breathe the faintest murmur. Pretty women ruled the Egyptians, Grecians, Romans, English, French, Germans, Spaniards, and Italians, and why should they not rule the Americans? Bennett’s Corporation plunder and his black mail of politicians and private citizens will appal the city and country, when I disclose his prodigious operations, and place Frederick Hudson, (his smooth Private Secretary,) and his brother Edward W. Hudson, (the author of the Herald Money Articles,) in the infamous position of their master. Bennett and Fred and Ned Hudson originated the Parker Vein and Potosi villanies, through which my brother William was reduced to beggary and ceaseless illness, for which I will haunt them to their capulets, and beyond, if possible. And now, as the Alligator’s jaws are limited, they cannot hold more of Bennett’s and the two Hudsons’ carcases to-day, but he will bite them mighty hard next week, and take larger chunks from their black mail hides, at his second lunge. And when my Alligator’s fangs reach Greeley and Raymond, he will revel and grin and snap his jaws, and fatten his belly, as though he was basking on the fertile borders of the Chagres.