The Indianapolis Journal says of the railroad collision which resulted in the death of Prof. Fletcher, Superintendent of Public Instruction in Indiana:
The evidence is almost conclusive that the collision was a premeditated act, and that the parties concerned in causing it are known. At first we discredited the rumor that the fatal freight car had been placed on the track to cause a wholesale murder, and said so; but we fear very much that the more horrible and abominable phase of the story is the more credible one. If murder was intended by this devilish act, no one can fail to see who was meant to be the victim, and whence emanated the motive. Gov. Morton was known all along the route, as we have learned since, to be on board that train. – It was known at Sullivan through passengers on the preceding train. Sullivan is, and has been, a nest of the most violent rebel sympathizers. – Union men have been lynched there. Union sentiments have been suppressed by violence, and more than once it has been seriously considered by the State authorities, whether an armed force would not be necessary to protect the loyal citizens. For weeks after the attack on Fort Sumter, the traitors of Sullivan, taking their cue from the Sentinel which denounced the war and refused to hoist the Union flag, kept a secession flag flying from a tall pole in full sight of every passing train. It has been a notorious and disgusting hole of treason. Gov. Morton has been one of the most efficient of all the public officers of the country, in preparing the people to met the rebel army and crush it. He is the most cordially hated man in the union by the whole heard of Bright adherents. Sullivan is the very place of all others where this internal malice would be most likely to take a deadly form, and try to carry its aim by murder. The intent of that collision was to kill Gov. Morton. It was treason going hand in hand with murder. The blow missed its aim, but it fell where it cost the State one of its most able and energetic officers, and the cause of the Union one of its most patriotic and persistent supporters. This fearful crime will yet return to plague the traitors who have encouraged the spirit that attempted it.
– Published in The Burlington Weekly Hawk-Eye, Burlington Iowa, Saturday, May 24, 1862, p. 3
