Rolla Herald

September 8, 1870

Communicated

Howell County

Editors Herald: - I reside in Illinois, and have been prospecting in Sourthern Missouri, and spent several days in Howell county, the “land” that has the reputation abroad of being “rent with civil feuds and bathed in fraternal blood.” I traveled over the county and mingled freely with the people, conversing with men of all shades of opinion, and I find that the exaggerated rumors about the insecurity of person and property have their origin in the efforts of a few irresponsible characters, lead by the notorious Monks, to force themselves into notoriety. “’Tis the whirlwind that elevates the feather from the earth, the calm breath of peace would leave it undisturbed upon the surface,” said Junius, and nowhere is this axiom more fully exemplified than in Howell county.

The war gave importance to Monks, who played no inconspicuous part among the hen roosts, butchery of defenseless old men and the indiscriminate robbery of friend and foe. Prior to the war, I am informed, he was a thirsty seeker after the spoils of office, and succeeded in dragging to his lair (a small black-jack cabin with no door) the emoluments of constable. In those days he did not mount the “barbed steed to fright the souls of fearful adversaries,” but, like Sancho Panza, “wagged lazily along” on a steed worse for sight and wear than Sapple or Rozinante.l His capillary extremity was then partially covered by a dress hat, minus the top of the crown, and the digits on his pedal extremities peeped curiously out from ragged pieces of leather, whilst his “ambulatory means” were clothed in the gay and festive cotton-coperas trousers. History furnishes no stranger transformation. We are told that Cincinnatus, after he saved Rome, went back to his plow. But not so with Monks, who has the unmerited reputation abroad of being so devoted to the government, and of hanging and keeping down rebel and Ku-Klux. Once having drank of the intoxicating bowl of power, having ranted, fumed and fretted one term in the Missouri house of representatives, and having been the happy recipient of immortal honors, such as being presented with a “nigger head” by the admiring fair sex of the State capital, he will be contented with no less than senatorial laurel. Monks hates suffrage. So do his followers, who together with him were, during the war, roaming over the country plundering and robbing.

I find in the liberal radical party of Howell such men as Sheriff M.L. Alsup, Judge Wright, A.H. White, E.F. Hynes, B.B. Carter, N.C. Epps, and hosts of other responsible property holders, who were in the struggle for the union, bravely contending for equal rights and the supremacy of the government in an honorable manner, whilst numbers of Monks’ deluded partisans were bushwhackers and rebelism who have perjured themselves and are now voting to the exclusion of men who however much misguided and wrong yet will not prostitute their consciences to such base ends. I am a radical-have always voted the republican ticket-but if Monks’ standard of radicalism was adopted I should certainly detest the name of radical.

Back

Sources

Next