Western correspondents to the Eastern Press.

Within a year after the publication of the "Man without a Country" in
the "Atlantic" more than half a million copies of the story had been
printed in America and in England. I had curious accounts from the army
and navy, of the interest with which it was read by gentlemen on duty.
One of our officers in the State of Mississippi lent the "Atlantic" to a
lady in the Miner family. She ran into the parlor, crying out, "Here is
a man who knows all about uncle Phil Nolan." An Ohio officer, who
entered the city of Jackson, in Mississippi, with Grant, told me that he
went at once to the State House. Matters were in a good deal of
confusion there, and he picked up from the floor a paper containing the
examination of _Philip Nolan_, at Walnut Springs, the old name of
Vicksburg. This was before the real Philip's last expedition. The United
States authorities, in the execution of the neutrality laws, had called
him to account, and had made him show the evidence that he had the
permission of the Governor of New Orleans for his expedition.

In 1876 I visited Louisiana and Texas, to obtain material for "Philip
Nolan's Friends." I obtained there several autographs of the real Phil
Nolan,--and the original Spanish record of one of the trials of the
survivors of his party,--a trial which resulted in the cruel execution
of Ephraim Blackburn, seven years after he was arrested. That whole
transaction, wholly ignored by all historians of the United States known
to me, is a sad blot on the American administration of the Spanish
kings. Their excuse is the confusion of everything in Madrid between
1801 and 1807. The hatred of the Mexican authorities among our
frontiersmen of the Southwest is largely due to the dishonor and cruelty
of those transactions.