Chicago (IL) Tribune, "More Blood and Thunder," October 29, 1859

   MORE BLOOD AND THUNDER.

   A Scotchman named Forbes --Col. Forbes --who made his appearance in the country during the days in which the Democratic party were attempting to force Slavery upon Kansas by measures which are now producing their legitimate results in Harper's Ferry, was engaged somewhere by somebody --where or by whom does not appear --to go to Kansas and give the Free-State men instruction in military science, of which he claimed to be a master. His service was short and his pay unsatisfactory, and he soon began to grumble at neglect and ill usage, and to persecute prominent friends of the Kansas cause for the payment of money for which they were never responsible. His efforts being unrewarded by success, he enters upon a career of letter-writing; and copies of the missives which he then addressed to various parties are published at length in the New York Herald of Thursday; and from them that journal endeavors to fasten upon many leading Republicans the crime of complicity in the insurrectionary movement of which Brown was the head. We have read his crazy missives with great care, and with a sincere desire to be fully enlightened in all the secret matters of the late outbreak; but further than the general confession that Brown and Forbes were engaged in the movement for exciting a stampede of slaves --of which movement a few radical Abolitionists may have been cognizant --we find nothing of any value whatever. He appears, if he may be believed --and his credibility is essentially weakened by his avowal of the plot that he and Brown had concocted --to have laid his unsatisfied claims before Mr. Seward, John P. Hale, Horace Greeley, and others of the Republican school; but got neither money nor encouragement from them. There is not in all he says a line or a word to implicate any Republican in the Virginia plot; not a line that might not, coming form the pen of such a man, be published in attacking any politician living, without the least damaging effect. But stupid and bullying as the letters are, they will be heralded by the Democratic journals as conclusive proofs of Republican guilt. The Herald commences the work of slander, and before the middle of the week every nigger-driving journal will be barking in the Herald's track. Wherever distortion of innocent words, suppression of important dates, the alteration of names, the filling up of initials, or downright Democratic lying can be made to serve the infamous purpose in which these servile sheets are engaged, lying, suppression and distortion will be freely employed.

   It is well for the public to watch well and scrutinize sharply the thousands of falsehoods which they will draw out of Brown's carpetbag, and Forbes' letters. Men pressed as the Democracy are by the consequences of the ruinous policy which they inaugurated in entering upon the subjugation of the country the rule of the Slave Power, must use desperate measures to free themselves of the odium which will inevitably follow them to their political graves. Lying as a resource which they can always command. It will be now used with a prodigality, which, if Democratic capacity in that respect was not like the widow's cruise, would exhaust the fountain whence their rivers of falsehoods are supplied.