Daily Times
Leavenworth, Kansas,
June 7, 1861
[From the Chicago Tribune.]
M. A. E. Matthews, formerly of Stark co., Ohio, has just accomplished one of the severest journeys ever undertaken in America by one who is not exactly a fugitive slave—having traveled on foot from Houston county, Texas, to Ironton, Mo., sleeping in woods and swamps, traversing prairies and mountain ranges and suffering alternately from the ravages of vigilance committees and vermin.—Mr. Matthews left Texas in the last week of April and reached Ironton on the 24th of the present month [May], whence he was brought, footsore, exhausted and penniless, to Chicago, by the kindness of the railroad officers.
When the news of the bombardment of Sumter reached Houston county, the hostility to persons of Northern birth became so virulent that Mr. Matthews deemed an early departure essential to his personal safety.—When this was followed by the news of President Lincoln’s proclamation, he was required to join the rebel army instanter, or take his chances in what they denominated a court martial. He determined to do neither, and thereupon, with the North star for his beacon, and the night for his leave taking, commenced his long and wearisome march for the free States. What with frequent bewilderment in the woods and more frequent dodging and retreating to escape vigilance committees, Mr. Matthews thinks that he must have traveled fully eight hundred miles before reaching an atmosphere where he could safely say that he was born on this side of Mason & Dixon. At Archadelphia, Ark., he was tried for the offence of traveling northward, and after escaping from the majority of the jury, by means of a tax receipt and a favorable notice in a Texas paper, he was taken in hand by the minority and threatened with hanging in true Arkansas style. He managed to elude them in the night and secrete himself in one of the mountain ranges north of that place. A short time previous to his escape, three persons hunting for cattle in the woods south-west of Archadelphia were hung by a band of regulators, merely because in their terror, they became confused, and were unable to give such an account of themselves as would be satisfactory to their captors. Trackless woods and swamps, deep rivers and heavy rains, continual arrests and persecution, were his portion during the whole of the journey until he reached the Missouri line.
In many parts of Arkansas, Mr. Matthews found Union men, and in some places, (Batesville, for instance,) they were in the majority. These persons lived in perpetual terror, and were longing for nothing so much as the sight of a column of Federal troops to reinstate the supremacy of the laws. The price of corn in that part of Texas where Mr. Matthews lived was between three and four dollars per bushel, and all their supplies came from New Orleans by way of Shreveport. Among the poorer classes there was great suffering for the necessaries of life, and he believes that, in spite of all that is being done to increase the production of grain at the South, the blockade at Cairo will starve out the rebellion.
Is there a reign of terror at the South? Apply to Mr. Matthews for an answer, and read it in his wan features, his swollen feet, his crippled limbs, his dilapidated clothing, and his shattered health.