d you, is it not within the range of a
generous nature--of an honest man"--to repair the injury by
taking back the article, and apologizing through the same medium
for the injury? If, however, you believe you have not "been
misled by some person," and have done me no more than justice in
that abusive article, hold on to it. Having made oath that the
horse is _fifteen feet high_, allow of no correction!

In all frankness, you must permit me to say, that I believe you
expected to find in the office on your return to Fincastle, a
letter from me demanding your authority for admitting into your
paper such an article against me, who, as you very well knew, up
to that hour had never said one word, publicly or privately,
against you or your paper. I think you concluded to _take the
start of me_, and thus to _forestall_ me, by writing from
Richmond some twenty-four hours before you would arrive at home!

In your paper of the 18th of April, issued only three days
before this letter was written at Richmond, an editorial of half
a column appears, in which _your_ paper styles me a "notorious
blackguard"--a "bullying blackguard"--an "unwanted and lying
man"--who "is mean enough to lie, cheat, or even steal"--a man
"wearing the garb of righteousness to serve the Devil in;" and
in the same article, the case of a Locofoco editor, who was
involved in a shooting scrape on account of his attack upon a
lady, is actually attributed to ME! Although you are a Reverend
Methodist Preacher, and a grave and dignified Steam Doctor,
conducting one of the organs of the Foreign and Anti-American
party in Virginia, you must pardon me for saying, as I now do,
that in calling upon me for my authority for what I had said in
reply to the unmitigated abuse of _your_ paper, you have proven
to my mind, that if you do not possess the cool and collected
impudence of the _Devil_, you are at least possessed of the
lion-headed impudence of an unprincipled Sag Nicht partisan,
hired to do the dirty work of an equally unprincipled and dirty
organization!

But it is due to the history of this controversy that I should
say, this second attack upon me sets forth that you are from
home, and that "the _Junior_ is responsible for the article."
This might be credited, if, on your return home, you had
protested against su