leave to others to determine how much censure an editor deserves for
inveigling a weak, non-combatant man, also a publisher, to a pen of his
own to be horsewhipped, if no worse, for the simple printing of what is
verbally in the mouth of nine out of ten men, and women too, upon the
street.
While writing this account two theories have occurred to me as possibly
true respecting this most remarkable assault:
First–The aim may have been simply to extort from me such admissions as
in the hands of money and influence would have sent me to the
Penitentiary for libel. This, however, seems unlikely, because any
statements elicited by fear or force could not be evidence in law or
could be so explained as to have no force. The statements wanted so
badly must have been desired for some other purpose.
Second–The other theory has so dark and wilfully murderous a look that I
shrink from writing it, yet as in all probability my death at the
earliest practicable moment has already been decreed, I feel I should do
all I can before my hour arrives, at least to show others how to break up
that aristocratic rule and combination which has robbed all Nevada of
true freedom, if not of manhood itself. Although I do not prefer this
hypothesis as a “charge,” I feel that as an American citizen I still have
a right both to think and to speak my thoughts even in the land of Sharon
and Winters, and as much so respecting the theory of a brutal assault
(especially when I have been its subject) as respecting any other
apparent enormity. I give the matter simply as a suggestion which may
explain to the proper authorities and to the people whom they should
represent, a well ascertained but notwithstanding a darkly mysterious
fact. The scheme of the assault may have been:
First–To terrify me by making me conscious of my own helplessness after
making actual though not legal threats against my life.
Second–To imply that I could save my life only by writing or signing
certain specific statements which if not subsequently explained would
eternally have branded me as infamous and would have consigned my family
to shame and want, and to the dreadful compassion and patronage of the
rich.
Third–To blow my brains out the moment I had signed, thereby preventing
me from making any subsequent explanation such as could remove the
infamy.
Fourth–Philip Lynch to be compelled to testify that I was killed by John
B. Winters in self-defence, for the conviction of Winters would bring
him in as an accomplice. If that was the programme in John B. Winters’
mind nothing saved my life but my persistent refusal to sign, when that
refusal seemed clearly to me to be the choice of death.
The remarkable assertion made to me by Mr. Winters, that pity only spared
my life on Wednesday evening last, almost compels me to believe that at
first he could not have intended me to leave that room alive; and why I
was allowed to, unless through mesmeric or some other invisible
influence, I cannot divine. The more I reflect upon this matter, the
more probable as true does this horrible interpretation become.
The narration of these things I might have spared both to Mr. Winters and
to the public had he himself observed silence, but as he has both
verbally spoken and suffered a thoroughly garbled statement of facts to
appear in the Gold Hill News I feel it due to myself no less than to this
community, and to the entire independent press of America and Great
Britain, to give a true account of what even the Gold Hill News has
pronounced a disgraceful affair, and which it deeply regrets because of
some alleged telegraphic mistake in the account of it. [Who received the
erroneous telegrams?]
Though he may not deem it prudent to take my life just now, the
publication of this article I feel sure must compel Gen. Winters (with
his peculiar views about his right to exemption from criticism by me) to
resolve on my violent death, though it may take years to compass it.