James Bessett to Richard Yates, enclosure

Salem Illinois

Dec 3. 1863

His Excellency

Richard Yates, Gov.

Sir/ Enclosed I send you an article handed to me to day. So far as it relates to me I despise it. My standing and character are too well known for it to disturb me.

I have not a copy of your Report, please send it to me and any other documents on the matter of use. I have replied to the enclosed article in the "Centralia Sentinel"

Yours Respectfully

James Bassett.

Bassett James

Salem Illinois

Dec 8 1863.

Encloses a Newspaper article handed him a few days ago. Will reply to it through the Centralia Sentinel. Wishes the Governor to send him his report,

Wrote him that the detailed report is in the hands of the clerk of the Legislature will furnish him with a copy as soon as the Journals are published.

H

Send report when published

Executive Office Dec 8 1863

PICKET GUARD.

JOHN R. SHANNON, EDITOR.

CHESTER ILLINOIS:

Wednesday November 25, 1863.

WANTS NOTORIETY.

One James Basset a one-horse, jack-leg pettifogger of Salem, Illinois, determined to achieve notoriety, even by playing flunkey to that tottering old debauchee, Dick Yates, communicates to the Centralia Sentinel of the 19th inst, the following twaddle, under the heading of "Slander Refuted:"

Salem Illinois, Nov. 14, 1863.

Editor of Centralia Sentinel:-

Dear Sir: Some [illegible] three weeks ago, at Nashville, Washington county, Col. W. R. Morrison made a speech in the Court Room. In the course of his generally-vituperative remarks on the President and especially Governor Yates, he stated in substance that of the $50,000 voted for the soldiers, and placed in the Governor's hands to disburse, only one thousand went to the soldiers, nine thousand in steamboat excursions, and the remaining $40,000 was unaccounted for by the Governor whom he sneeringly called the soldier's friend. Believing this to be untrue, yet unable to reply by facts, I wrote to Governor Yates for an explanation, so that I might refute the charge. I received the following satisfactory reply, which I send to you for publication.

EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENT,

Springfield, Nov 10, 1863.

Sir: Your letter of the 28:h of October, was handed to me yesterday; it would have been answered before if I had been at home.

It is impossible for me to give you at present, the items for which the $50,000 appropriation was expended but will refer you to the report which I made to the Legislature, showing how the funds were disposed of The fact that not a single item was objected to, is sufficient to refute the ridiculous charge you speak of. I am truly thankful for your offer to answer the accusation.

Respectfully yours.

Richard Yates, Gov.

Comment is unnecessary.

Truly yours, JAMES BASSET.

If Mr. Basset will refer to Gov. Yates' report to the legislature, and show us by the Governor's own figures that Col. Morrison has charged him with anything that is "untrue," it will be more to the point. The report of Governor Yates, itself is proof patent that of the $50,000 voted by the legislature of Illinois for the soldiers in the field, Governor Yates, and his "strikers and bowers" "gobbled up" $40 000, and that all of the remaining $10 000 except less than $2,000 was paid out for steamboat charters, wines and refreshments, which the country knows that Dick Yates, Mrs. Major Belle Reynolds, et id omne genus guzzled on the pleasure excursion to Pittsburg Landing.

B ass-et is evidently an ass. A professed lawyer, he confesses in the above that he knows nothing of what he attempts to deny, while there is not an intelligent boy of eighteen years in this country, but had, months ago read Yates' report to the legislature, which, in black and white, over his own signature, tells the world that of the $50,000 voted by the Illinois legislature, for the purpose of relieving the wants and distresses of the sick and wounded soldiers of Illinois, he, Dick Yates -"The soldiers' friend" - applied $40 000 to the payment of himself and his strikers, and of the remaining $10,000 all but less than $2,000 was paid for steamboat excursions.

It is late in the day for any man to deny that Dick Yates swindled the poor soldiers out of $48,000 and upwards. Though the charge has been made for months, no respectable Abolitionist has heretofore been found with hardihood enough to deny it, and now, this Mr. James B-ass-head raises his wooly cranium and denies what Dick Yates himself admits in his report.

We thus have the denial of a stay-at-home abolitionist against the word of a patriotic Democrat like Col. Bill Morrison who has shown his love of country on the tented field. B-ass-et you may be a very ass-tute pettifogger. but when you attempt to write down Col. Bill Morrison as a slanderer, you only succeed in writing yourself down as an unmitigated Ass.