Navarro Express [Corsicana, TX], August 25, 1860
“The telegraphic report of an abolition conspiracy in Northern Texas, is viewed here by Southern men as a humbug gotten up for political effect.”—New York Herald, July 25th.
A paper published at Austin styling itself the Southern Intelligencer, of the 15th inst., alluding and quoting the above extract from the Herald, says:
“They understand it. The late excitement about negro insurrection, which frightened all our women and children, and kept thousands of true conservative men from the polls, seems as well understood at Washington as here.”
Horace Greeley, of the New York Tribune, said that he thought it was the work of pro-slavery men, done to exasperate the community against abolitionists. The Intelligencer says very near the same thing as the leader of Abolitionists. That paper, on the 15th of August, at Austin, after more than one and a half million of property has been destroyed—after hearing of the destruction of the town of Henderson—endorses what the New York Herald thought about it on the28th of July, regarding it as “a humbug gotten up for political effect.” The object which actuates a paper in saying such a thing, is too disgusting to invite investigation or justify refutation. It brings disappointment to but few, for little better was expected of the Southern Intelligencer. Does the editor of that paper believe in the doctrine of concerted and concurrent accidents? or does that paper wish to beget or strengthen the anti-slavery element in Texas, as the New York Tribune stated the Douglas ticket was doing? The public mind is too firmly and logically fixed in the conclusion that nine-tenths of the recent fires in Texas were the work of abolition incendiaries, to accept the apology which the Intelligencer makes for Northern Abolitionists, while attempting to explain the want of those “conservative voters who were kept from the polls.”