PERSONAL EXPLANATION.
Mr. HEFFREN said: Mr. Speaker, I rise to a question of personal privilege. I hold in my hands a copy of this morning's Journal in which is an article entitled "After Many Years," purporting to come from the pen of General Reub Williams, in the Warsaw Times. All I have to say at present is that most of the article is a tissue of falsehoods, as the public record will show. It is true that I wis arrested and confined in a Government Prison for thirty four days; that I was put upon trial and discharged. It is further true, but not stated in said article, that afterward the Supreme Court of the United States decided that the trial was illegal and that the Military Commission had no jurisdiction nor right to try me. It is also true that a majority of the Justices of the Supreme page: 69[View Page 69] Court were Republicans, making that decision. When I was incarcerated I only weighed 180 pounds, but that imprisonment; so ground the Democracy that was in me, that it permeated my whole system and gave me a new growth, until now I tip the beam at 390 pounds. If occasion requires, I may go into the whole matter, but at present I have only to ask General Reub Williams, the Indianapolis Journal and the Republican party generally: "Supposing all this be true, What are you. going to do about it?" [Applause.]
