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House a gross outrage, and called it, in his correspondence with the Tribune, “a more discreditable proposition than I had ever known gravely submitted to a legislative body.”
Thereupon
Rust, on January 23, struck
Greeley several blows with his fist as the editor was walking through the
Capitol grounds, and repeated the assault when
Greeley came up with him on his way to his hotel, breaking a cane over his critic's arm and inflicting on him a severe bruise.
Greeley refused to prosecute his assailant, saying that he “did not choose to be beaten for money,” and that he did not think an antislavery editor could get justice in a Washington court.
It was in 1856 also that the Tribune was indicted in Harrison County, Virginia, on a charge of publishing in New York, and circulating in Virginia, a newspaper which incited negroes to insurrection, and “inculcated resistance to the rights of property of masters in their slaves” ; and its agent there was indicted for getting up a club of the paper.
Neither indictment ever came to trial.
After the nomination of Fremont for President, in 1856, the Tribune conceded that the odds were greatly in favor of the Democrats, and in announcing his defeat it said, “We have lost a battle.
The Bunker Hill of ”
