Chicago (IL) Press and Tribune, "Virginia Wants the Nation to Foot Her Bills," December 8, 1859

“Occasional” writes thus to the Philadelphia Press:

WASHINGTON, Dec. 2, 1859.

As I predicted in one of my late letters, the execution of John Brown has been consummated, not only, without the slightest attempt at a rescue, but in the midst of an exclusive Virginia population. Not a Northern reporter was permitted to obtain access to the prisoner, and a number were refused admission into the borders of the “Old Dominion.” Governor Wise has accomplished nothing by his ostentatious preparations except to cover his State with ridicule. It is rumored that immediately after the organization of the House, one of the Virginia delegation will rise in his place and introduce a bill making an appropriation to defray all the expenses incurred, as well in the suppression of the attack at Harper’s Ferry as in the subsequent proceedings – the money, of course, to come out of the National Treasury. Whether Judge Black has suggested this movement, or whether it comes from the President, in his anxiety to address himself to the existing excitement in the South, in order to promote his nomination by the Charlestown Convention, I am not able to say; but I have no doubt that some such proposition will be made and insisted upon.
Let it be insisted upon; we rather think Virginia will have to insist a good while, before getting any such preposterous claim allowed.