"As soon as I have the time, I hasten to tender to you my sincere sympathies for the barbarous and uncivilized treatment you received at Florence a few days since. The correspondent of the _Age-Herald_, who lives at Florence, saw 'an amusing sight last night to see the boasted disciple of Kolbism, J. C. Manning, run from a volley of rotten eggs thrown by fifty enraged men.' He could have seen in this 'amusing sight,' the return of the Spanish Inquisition and diabolic intolerance of barbarism, had he been able to look ahead. This was outrageous and inhuman treatment for which I assure you I am full of regrets. I am ashamed that it has happened in Alabama or the South. This spirit shown you, and the abuse heaped upon you, if not denounced and punished speedily, will culminate in the hottest persecution of an honest minority; which will prohibit free speech and destroy the right to oppose the majority, although that majority be led by the devil himself. If that spirit is not rebuked in our state and the righteous indignation of our people does not stamp it out swiftly, then the darkest days of the Rebellion will be bright as compared to those to follow. This spirit will invade the pulpit and go into the sanctum of the editor, and sermons will have to be pleasant, pacific and agreeable, and editors must agree with those in authority, or else the minister will be driven out of town, and the editor will be rotten-egged or swung up by the thumbs! If that comes to pass, then give me a monarchical government. I should greatly prefer to appeal to Caesar, than to an enraged mob of 'fifty or more citizens' (?) fired up with red liquor, and thirsting for the blood of the man who differs from them,--a set of brainless, heartless sapheads. I heard a gentleman who saw it, denounce it as the most villainous thing he ever saw in a land of freedom. He does not belong to your party,--neither do I,--but he was for you. You keep on, if you die at your post. Mobs to-day, mausoleums to-morrow. The party that resorts to such tactics may ride the top of the wave to-day, but the good time is coming when that rotten and rum-soaked method will be buried out of sight under an avalanche of ballots of brave men, who scorn the rotten-egg method of answering brainy arguments, which 'Bourbons' have not sense enough to meet in any other way. For my part, I do not believe in intolerance. The day has passed to allow it. God holds the reins of government. Life, liberty and free speech are our own inalienable rights. To destroy these, as the mobs would do, is to muzzle the press, kill the stump-speaker, and hang the preacher who does not court popular applause, and who defies public sentiment that is wrong. "Cordially yours for the Right, L. F. WHITTEN."