The Alleghanian

Cowardly Brutality of a Traitor.

The Green Bay Free Press gives the following notice to the infamous traitor, the late Gen. David B. Twiggs:

To many of our older citizens Gen. Twiggs is well known. Thirty odd years he was stationed here, in command of Fort Howard. Invested with supreme trust in this then new country, with little or no Government other than martial law, examples of his vindictive and barbarous conduct live in the memory of some of the old residents with bitter distinctness. There are no brilliant deeds of heroism in his history, as in most American officers of his age, to dazzle or avert the eyes bent upon his early infamy and wanton barbarism. A long life of service in the army, mostly in frontier stations, has afforded means of gratification to his tyrant nature; but in his profession his cowardice shielded him from danger more successfully than his vanity stimulated him to his distinction. In his intercourse with civilians, he was supercilious and overbearing. In his conduct to his soldiers, he was the merciless tyrant and taskmaster. He was constantly embroiled in feuds without cause of complaint; his command was never without its victims of his cruelty and oppression.

In 1828, a soldier named Prestige, smarting under the infliction of punishment more severe than usual, determined to take his life. Making his preparations with extraordinary care, Prestige watched his opportunity when Twiggs was asleep in his quarters one afternoon, and stealthily creeping to his bedside, placed the muzzle of a heavily-loaded musket to his ear, and commended his soul to the keeping of the infernal regions. By some strange accident the musket missed fire; but the snapping of the gun awoke the sleeper, and seizing the musket by the muzzle he brained the soldier at a blow, leaving him for dead. So far it was all right; doubtless the outraged but treacherous soldier deserved to suffer death.—His skull was smashed in by the gunlock; but he lived—lived to suffer a complication of horrors sickening to think of. The skull of the wounded man was trepanned by Dr. Foot—an excellent surgeon and man: and while the patient was under his immediate care his condition was comfortable. But scarcely had he commenced to convalescence, when Twiggs began a series—a system—of cruelties and enormities unparalleled in the annals of vindictive persecution. Before his reason was entirely regulated, the suffering soldier was severely cowhided once every day, either by the hand of the tyrant himself, or by his orders and in his presence. He was confined in the dungeon, fed like a beast upon uncooked food, denied any comfort or convenience suitable to man, and worried and exasperated with taunts and curses, as a sauce to his coarser punishment. In the Fall or Autumn of the year the troops at Fort Howard were ordered to the Portage to establish Fort Winnebago. Prestige, feeble with famine and brutal chastisement, crippled with chains and laden with burden, was forced to march under guard through 150 miles of wilderness. Once when a pitying fellow-soldier relieved his fainting victim of part of his burden for a while, he was kicked and cursed for a scoundrel for his impertinent humanity. Arrived at the Portage, he was not permitted the coarse comforts of his fellows, but chained to a tree like a beast. In this condition he was kept through a severe Winter, without shelter or protection other than one blanket and a shed of slabs which some other soldiers were suffered to build around him. It is said that the villain Twiggs never passed the lair without bestowing upon his suffering victim, nauseous with filth and alive with vermin, a blow or a kick and a curse. In the Spring of 1829 when the soldier's enlistment expired, and the tyrant could no longer retain him for his private persecution and revenge, his head was shaved and he was drummed out of the service. When he could no longer reach him by his own arbitrary schemes of torture he sent him to this city and surrendered him to the civil authorities to be tried for his attempt on the dastard's life. He was tried, and sentenced by Judge Doty to five years' imprisonment in the county jail; but only a short time elapsed when a proper representation of the facts was made to President Jackson, and he was pardoned and set at liberty.