Something Rich!

Commenting on a speech given by Rev. Hunnicutt a preacher and editor of a "nigger" paper and voicing their displeasure with white people supporting black people.

Something Rich!--Brownlow's Varieties--Exhibition at Masonic Hall--A Crowded House. From the Indianapolis Herald, 26th. Brownlow's troupe of negro minstrels gave an exhibition at Masonic Hall last night. REV. MR. HUNNICUTT is a preacher and editor of a nigger paper in Richmond, Virginia. He is a gaunt, grizzly specimen of concrete fanaticism, evidently out of place in the society of white men, even such as those who compose the loyal delegation of southern pilgrims now on their way to crocodile at the tomb of Lincoln, Hunnicutt is an "end man" of the show, and a perfect Guy Fawkes. He is a blood and thunder cuss, who is determined on the regeneration of the South at all hazards. In the outset of his speech he narrowly avoided the rock on which he split in the Philadelphia Convention--personal biography--but sheered off in time, and proceeded to draw a graphic and striking picture of matters and things in Virginia. The people of that infernal commonwealth are a thousand per cent, more devilish, inhuman, bloodthirsty, disloyal, damnable, ungodly and hell-deserving than at any time during the rebellion. A loyal man cannot live there. The foul atmosphere of treason would choke one like fire-damp. The hell-hounds would tear him limb from limb on the faintest suspicion of loyalty, drink his blood, and grind his bones. Blood cocktails, arterial punches, and venous sangarees, made of the vital fluid of loyal men, are the most fashionable drinks at the Richmond saloons. In the next breath he told us he published the most radical paper in the world right in the midst of these horrible man-eaters, said what he pleased, did what he pleased, and was not molested. Mr. Hunnicutt laid down his programme for the regeneration of the South. He demanded of Congress an army of bayonets, to lie quartered in Richmond until he could revolutionize the Government, turn the rebels out of office, and place loyal negroes in their places. He proposed to raise an army of white and black loyalists, and if a rebel even dared to crook his finger, he would be a dead rebel. He did not propose to disfranchise rebels for five years simply, but for 15,990 years. After he had succeeded in all this, with the ballot and the bayonet in the hands of the loyal negroes, the millennium would come; and he invited his Indiana friends to come down and see him in his paradise. They had tried to get up a mob when he established the New Nation at Richmond. Pollard had published in his paper that the white men who patronized his paper were already d--d, and that the negroes who encouraged it should be expelled from the community. Yet he walked the streets of Richmond day and night, and had never been molested. He knew the southern people. Give way to them, and they were domineering, overbearing, and murderous. But stand for the right, and they were cowards. He himself was a man of peace. He didn't want to kill anybody, nor to be killed; but if anybody attacked him, by the God who made him, he would slay his antagonist--from all or which we draw the inference that Hunnicutt is a fighting ethos. He said that if ever Pollard laid the wright of his finger upon him, from the moment he was a "goner." Another element of strength was in the 10,000 loyal blacks, who would wade through blood to their armpits for him. Let them harm him or his printing office, and Richmond would be in ashes within twenty-four hours. We were not much surprised at the crafty, demoniac spirit which pervaded the harangue of this white nifrger, but we must confess that the hearty manner in which it was received by the audience took us somewhat aback. We never saw such wild enthusiasm before. The audience shouted and yelled In the most frantically delightful manner for five or ten minutes at a time, swinging their hats In the air, and hugging each other, in the frenzy of the moment. The principles of God and humanity have progressed more rapidly than we thought possible, and General Coburn has made an ass of himself in trying to wriggle out of his Masonic Hall declaration in favor of negro suffrage. Had he stuck to that he might now be the most popular man in the State.

“Something Rich!,” Reconstructing Virginia, accessed May 28, 2023, https://reconstructingvirginia.richmond.edu/items/show/352.