Page:Andrew Erwin - Gen. Jackson's Negro Speculations (1828).djvu/19

 the firm to make the purchase, and that he understood, you advanced your proportion (one third) of the purchase money. How then do you attempt to prove your ridiculous tale? he only particle of proof offered by you, is an alleged copy of a memorandum of your own, by contradicting all your other memoranda, and exhibited only to a few of your chosen confidants. If you are so ready to refer to a part of your documents, why are you not equally ready to expose them all? Why have you not candidly exhibited all your books and papers, which cannot fail to discover how the transaction really was, and boldly called upon friend or foe to come forward and examine them? We should then see when the payment was made to Epperson, which, I assert, was three days after the alleged date of your agreement. On the contrary you have hurried all your documents away to your private desk, where they remain carefully concealed; and in the vain hope of preventing the production of evidence, you have taught your printers not only to hint :at the indignant flashing of your eye," but to attempt to intimidate peaceable citizens by threats, on their part promptly to assail the private character of any man, who shall dare to give testimony unfavorable to you. What confidence then, under such circumstances, can be reposed in this alleged memorandum, on the back of your agreement?—Does it not rather create suspicions of something worse than has hitherto been discovered. But sir, without dwelling longer on this point, I will call your attention, and that of the American people, to the following letter from a gentleman whose high standing is well known to the citizens of Tennessee—a gentleman not only above reproach in private life, but distinguished for his public services in the legislature of the state, and the congress of the nation.

Jone 14, 1828.

Col. Andrew Erwin—

Sir: In answer to your letter, addressed to me, of the 26th ult. making inquiry relative to what knowledge I have respecting Gen. Andrew Jackson's buying and selling negroes for profit, and his bringing negroes from Natchez—in the year 1811 or 12, I understood that a Mr. Horace Green, took from Nashville a number of negroes to Natchez, for sale, and that those negroes were the property of the late Joseph Coleman, of Nashville, Gen. A. Jackson, and said Horace Green, (yet I do not know this of my own knowledge.) Some time after, I heard Gen. Andrew Jackson say he went to Natchez, or somewhere in that country, and had brought said negroes back to Tennessee; and about that time, a Mr. Dinsmore, the United States agent tor the Choctaw nation of Indians, was in the habit of stopping all persons travelling through said nation with a negro or negroes, who had not a passport. The General observed, that he had taken no passport, and on the morning he was to pass the agency, that he armed two of his most resolute negro men, and put them in front of his negroes, and gave them orders to FIGHT THEIR WAY, if necessary.

He further observed, that a friend had put into his hand, the night before, or that morning, a good rifle; that when he came opposite