In Breaking Up
These Haunts, The Regulators, I Understand, Have Proceeded With Some Of
The Formalities Commonly Used In Administering Justice.
The accused party
has been allowed to make his defense, and witnesses have been examined,
both for and against him.
These proceedings, however, have lately suffered a most tragical
interruption. Not long after Bridge's house was pulled down, two men,
mounted and carrying rifles, called at the dwelling of a Mr Campbell,
living at Whiterock Grove, in Ogle county, who belonged to the company of
regulators, and who had acted as the messenger to convey to Bridge the
order to leave the county. Meeting Mrs. Campbell without the house, they
told her that they wished to speak to her husband. Campbell made his
appearance at the door and immediately both the men fired. He fell
mortally wounded and lived but a few minutes. "You have killed my
husband," said Mrs. Campbell to one of the murderers whose name was
Driscoll. Upon this they rode off at full speed.
As soon as the event was known the whole country was roused, and every man
who was not an associate of the horse-thieves, shouldered his rifle to go
in pursuit of the murderers. They apprehended the father of Driscoll, a
man nearly seventy years of age, and one of his sons, William Driscoll,
the former a reputed horse-thief, and the latter, a man who had hitherto
borne a tolerably fair character, and subjected them to a separate
examination. The father was wary in his answers, and put on the appearance
of perfect innocence, but William Driscoll was greatly agitated, and
confessed that he, with his father and others, had planned the murder of
Campbell, and that David Driscoll, his brother, together with another
associate, was employed to execute it. The father and son were then
sentenced to death; they were bound and made to kneel; about fifty men
took aim at each, and, in three hours from the time they were taken, they
were dead men. A pit was dug on the spot where they fell, in the midst of
a prairie near their dwelling; their corpses, pierced with bullet-holes in
every part, were thrown in, and the earth was heaped over them.
The pursuit of David Driscoll and the fellow who was with him when
Campbell was killed, is still going on with great activity. More than a
hundred men are traversing the country in different directions, determined
that no lurking-place shall hide them. In the mean time various persons
who have the reputation of being confederates of horse-thieves, not only
in Ogle county, but in the adjoining ones, even in this, have received
notice from the regulators that they cannot be allowed to remain in this
part of the state. Several suspicious-looking men, supposed to be
fugitives from Ogle county, have been seen, within a few days past,
lurking in the woods not far from this place. One of them who was seen the
day before yesterday evidently thought himself pursued and slunk from
sight; he was followed, but escaped in the thickets leaving a bundle of
clothing behind him.
Samonok, Kane County, Illinois, _July 5th._
I have just heard that another of the Driscolls has been shot by the
regulators. Whether it was David, who fired at Campbell, or one of his
brothers, I can not learn.
Letter IX.
Richmond in Virginia.
Richmond, Virginia, _March 2, 1843._
I arrived at this place last night from Washington, where I had observed
little worth describing. The statue of our first President, by Greenough,
was, of course, one of the things which I took an early opportunity of
looking at, and although the bad light in which it is placed prevents the
spectator from properly appreciating the features, I could not help seeing
with satisfaction, that no position, however unfavorable, could impair the
majesty of that noble work, or, at all events, destroy its grand general
effect.
The House of Representatives I had not seen since 1832, and I perceived
that the proceedings were conducted with less apparent decorum than
formerly, and that the members no longer sat with their hats on. Whether
they had come to the conclusion that it was well to sit uncovered, in
order to make up, by this token of mutual respect, for the too frequent
want of decorum in their proceedings, or whether the change has been made
because it so often happens that all the members are talking together, the
rule being that the person speaking must be bareheaded, or whether,
finally, it was found, during the late long summer sessions, that a hat
made the wearer really uncomfortable, are questions which I asked on the
spot, but to which I got no satisfactory answer. I visited the Senate
Chamber, and saw a member of that dignified body, as somebody calls it, in
preparing to make a speech, blow his nose with his thumb and finger
without the intervention of a pocket-handkerchief. The speech, after this
graceful preliminary, did not, I confess, disappoint me.
Whoever goes to Washington should by all means see the Museum at the
Patent Office, enriched by the collections lately brought back by the
expedition sent out to explore the Pacific. I was surprised at the extent
and variety of these collections. Dresses, weapons, and domestic
implements of savage nations, in such abundance as to leave, one would
almost think, their little tribes disfurnished; birds of strange shape and
plumage; fishes of remote waters; whole groves of different kinds of
coral; sea-shells of rare form and singular beauty from the most distant
shores; mummies from the caves of Peru; curious minerals and plants:
whoever is interested by such objects as these should give the museum a
more leisurely examination than I had time to do. The persons engaged in
arranging and putting up these collections were still at their task when I
was at Washington, and I learned that what I saw was by no means the
whole.
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