usetts, and it singled out Motley
for the most particular abuse. I think it is still questioned whether
there was any such person as the one named,--at any rate, it bore the
characteristic marks of those vulgar anonymous communications which
rarely receive any attention unless they are important enough to have the
police set on the track of the writer to find his rathole, if possible. A
paragraph in the "Daily Advertiser" of June 7, 1869, quotes from a
Western paper a story to the effect that one William R. M'Crackin, who
had recently died at ---- confessed to having written the M' Crackin
letter. Motley, he said, had snubbed him and refused to lend him money.
"He appears to have been a Bohemian of the lowest order." Between such
authorship and the anonymous there does not seem to be much to choose.
But the dying confession sounds in my ears as decidedly apocryphal. As
for the letter, I had rather characterize it than reproduce it. It is an
offence to decency and a disgrace to the national record on which it is
found. This letter of "George W. M'Crackin" passed into the hands of Mr.
Seward, the Secretary of State. Most gentlemen, I think, would have
destroyed it on the spot, as it was not fit for the waste-basket. Some,
more cautious, might have smothered it among the piles of their private
communications. If any notice was taken of it, one would say that a
private note to each of the gentlemen attacked might have warned him that
there were malicious eavesdroppers about, ready to catch up any careless
expression he might let fall and make a scandalous report of it to his
detriment.

The secretary, acquiescing without resistance in a suggestion of the
President, saw fit to address a formal note to several of the gentlemen
mentioned in the M'Crackin letter, repeating some of its offensive
expressions, and requesting those officials to deny or confirm the report
that they had uttered them.

A gentleman who is asked whether he has spoken in a "malignant" or
"offensive" manner, whether he has "railed violently and shamefully"
against the President of the United States, or against anybody else,
might well wonder who would address such a question to the humblest
citizen not supposed to be wanting in a common measure of self-respect. A
gentleman holding an important official station in a foreign country,
receiving a letter containing such questions, signed by the prime
minister of his government, if he did not think himself im