"Peccavi" (I have sinned) (1864)

☞ PECCAVI.—The editor of the [Lansingburgh] Gazette can take our hat: he deserves it for his defence of local institutions. It is enough—we recant. "Know all men by these presents" that the Fair Grounds, which by a lapsus pen-gue were located in Troy, belong first, last and always to the 'burgh. Who will dare question its right and title to the possession after reading the following educt, issued by the "father of the faithful?" Not we, surely:The Troy WHIG speaks of a meeting of Trojans in reference to a proposed army hospital "in our city." At first glance, one would suppose that the Trojans designed to get up a hospital in opposition to the Fair Grounds Hospital in our village. But no—it is the Fair Grounds Hospital that is referred to with favor as belonging to "our city,"—Troy. Does the WHIG desire to incite a civil convulsion by encroaching upon our municipal jurisdiction—insolently ignoring a local sovereignty as old at "The Oldest Inhabitant," as sacred as Magna Charta, and as Dutch as the thick tongues of De Ruyter and Van Tromp? Bear in mind, WHIG, that the Lansingburgh and Troy line runs south of the Fair Grounds, as you will see by the Nestor Barton's official maps—and if you put a municipal foot upon the territory,—are, if you even menacingly reassert your claim of ownership, it will be at your peril? We will call out the militia, cut off the horse railroad, close our Oakwood cemetery against you, so that you will have no place to lay away your bones, drive you away from our fragrant slaughter houses, close up our harbor against your long-faced yachters, and our lovely groves against your jolly pic-nicers. Mind that.—"All we want is to be let alone." You will speak of "precedents!"—say because Napoleon and Alexander on the raft at Tilsit transferred the right bank of the Rhine, and a glib-tongued Frenchman and a tapy haberdasher metamorphosed behind their pipes the ancient "Bald Mountain" into "Mount Rafinesque," Aldermen McMuddle and McMangle's christening at a Batestown booth, over tankards with red vintage flowing, the Fair Grounds section as the Eleventh Ward of Troy, has all the legal force of inter-municipal authority! Most illogical assumption—unsustained by anything in Vattel or the Commentaries, though Counsellor Beach might make a clear case of fees out of it, and it might suffice to throw Alderman Smart into another protracted hysterical outburst of rhetorical anguish. Keep off that sacred soil. We'll have no compromises—nothing short of practical recognition of our rights. Otherwise, war, war, war!Troy Daily Whig. September 17, 1864: 3 col 4.The same item as the above, excluding the portions by or referencing the Whig, appeared in the Troy Daily Times. September 16, 1864: 3 col 3.