Let no one suppose for a moment, from what I have now said, that I design to offer any apology, any excuse for the nameless and unpunishable crimes which these miscreants have perpetrated. I have no pity and no compassion for them, and surely no word either which I desire should be construed, in this respect, to their favor. I go with the old Scotch judge--a rigid Antinomian! who, having tried and convicted a Calvinist as rigid as himself, asked him what he had to say why the sentence of the law should not be pronounced against him. 'My lord,' said the prisoner, 'it's a bad job; but I was predestined to do it!' Whereupon his lordship replied: 'Ay! ay! my cannie laddie! an' I was predestined to hang ye for't.' So while I set forth the necessary, evil nature of the Indian, and the consequent necessity of his bloody deeds, I also insist upon the necessity of hanging him for it. I plead not for the Indian of Minnesota, after these most shocking, most appalling butcheries. I love my own race; and not a man, woman, or child, who was sacrificed by these monsters, but their wounds were my wounds, and their agonies tore my heart to the very core. Henceforth I shall never see an Indian but I shall feel the 'goose flesh' of loathing and horror steal over my Adam's buff! But you, my beloved friends of Minnesota! you who have suffered so much in your families and homes during the massacre, are you sure that you did all you could do as citizens and rulers in this land to see even-handed justice dealt out between the corrupt Government agencies and storekeepers, and the helpless Indians? Had these last no just and reasonable ground of complaint? complaint of the General Government, complaint of the delays in their payment, complaint of the swindling of the storekeepers and traders? They had sold their lands, and gone away to their reservations. But the money for their lands--promised so faithfully at such a time--where was that money? _Non est!_ The Indians depended on it, trusted to the certainty of its coming as the saint trusts in the promises. They came for it--often, in their history, in the depth of winter, for hundred of miles, through an inhospitable forest; their wives, children, and braves starving--many of them left behind in the wilderness to die; their only weapon made of coarse nails, lashed with wire, and this they called a gun barrel, and with this they killed what game was killed by the way.