Page:History of Iowa From the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century Volume 2.djvu/131

 Minister to Bogota, when the Rebellion began. As a delegate in Congress from Wisconsin, he had secured the establishment of the Territory of Iowa and was one of the first United States Senators chosen from the State of Iowa after its admission into the Union, serving until 1859. He was always faithful and untiring in his work for the interests of our State and was as widely known to its citizens as any man within its limits. When the news came of his arrest for treasonable utterances, in December, 1861, upon his return from Bogota to New York, and his incarceration in the military prison of Fort Lafayette, it produced great excitement in Iowa, and profound regret among his thousands of personal and political friends. It was in time learned that the cause of his arrest was found in an intercepted letter written by him to his long-time personal friend and colleague in the Senate, Jefferson Davis, lately chosen President of the Southern Confederacy. In that letter were found the following expressions:

“May God Almighty avert Civil War, but if unhappily it shall come, you may, and I think doubtless would count on my and mine, and hosts of other friends standing shoulder to shoulder in the ranks with you and our other Southern friends and relatives, whose rights, like my own, have been disregarded by the Abolitionists. … The dissolution of the Union will probably be the cause of my own ruin, as well as that of my country, and may cause me and mine to go South.”

General Jones was imprisoned several months but was never brought to trial, or even indicted for crime, and was finally released and returned to his home at Dubuque. His indiscretion in this affair was attributed to his warm personal friendship and long years of intimate association in the Senate with men who afterwards became leaders of the Rebellion. His great public services in behalf of our State, from the earliest period of its existence as a political organization, were gratefully remembered and appreciated by the people he had faithfully represented and their