Mahony asks for Proof!

Every now and then Father Mahony, of the Dubuque Herald, flares up under the hot shot that we occasionally amuse ourselves into firing into his treasonable craft, and demands, with all the authority of a Southern slave driver, to know by what authority we accuse him of treason, what has he ever done to merit such an accusation! In his last issue he says: “We would like the GAZETTE, or any other paper who alludes to us in the same manner, to point out any treasonable doctrine ever uttered by us in any case, or under any circumstances.” We don’t keep files of his shoet [sic]; but remembering that some months ago we answered the same inquiry so emphatically that he did not dare gainsay us, we turned our files for the article. Almost the first paragraph our eyes lighted upon was one in which the Dubuque Herald, in alluding to a proposed secession amendment by its great prototype and namesake of New York, says, “For our part, we would willing accede to the amendment of the Constitution of the United States proposed by the seceded States.” Without looking further, we regard this as sufficiently treasonable.

But, why, we would ask, was the Dubuque Herald prohibited from circulating through the mails of Missouri by Provost Marshal McKinstry, if it were not on account of the treasonable doctrines it contained, and the effect it would have upon the rebels of that State? No, Father Mahony, we believe ferventy that if you had been required to take up arms for or against the Government of the United States, before the Southern Confederacy was in the descendancy, that you would have lovingly twined your arm around the aristocratic neck of ex-Fort Warren Jones, and gone with him to fight, where your every editorial shows your sympathies to be most deeply interested.

– Published in The Davenport Daily Gazette, Davenport, Iowa, Saturday Morning, April 19, 1862, p. 2