The Red Woods Laborers no participants in the Contra Costa Election Fraud. - RED WOOD, SAN ANTONIO, March 22, 1853.

The Red Woods Laborers no participants in the Contra Costa Election Fraud.

RED WOOD, SAN ANTONIO, March 22, 1853.

EDITORS ALTA - Presuming your columns open for reply to unjust charges which appear in them, I take the liberty to offer you a few words on behalf of the Redwoods. In your paper of last Tuesday week, (I think that is the date,) your Benecia correspondent, treating of the contested election case in the Assembly from this county, states that the fraudulent votes polled at Oakland for Mr. Carpentier were mostly thrown by men from the Redwoods and further states that, from the testimony in that case, it appears that the Redwoods contain "the most precious set of scoundrels unhung in California," or words to that effect, and goes on at some length to vilify the good name of the quiet, industrious, and unobtrusive laborers in the mountain forests.

Now, gentlemen, I know not what the testimony before the Committee on Elections was; but I fearlessly assert that if the testimony was as represented, it was and is base and unqualified perjury. I am well acquainted in the Redwoods: have resided and labored here nearly a year, and am no stranger in any of the camps or mills. A poll was open at Prince's mill, in the Middle Canon, and one at Larue's store, at the Embarcadero. Very few in the Upper Canon voted at all, and not one that I can learn voted for Carpentier. Haliday was the favorite candidate of the Redwoods. Very few of them are squatters, and still fewer had confidence that Carpentier would be of any service to their interests. I have it also from reliable authority that scarcely a voter from any part of the Redwoods went to Oakland on the day of election, and that Carpentier, if he procured fraudulent votes, procured them elsewhere than at the saw-mills and shingle camps of these mountain glens.

If your correspondent had been as knowing, as he thought he was, he could have told a story which men of sense would believe. The ferry boat of that day from San Francisco to Oakland was crowded with men fitted for the purposes of the demagogue. If these did what they boasted of having done, it will be easy to account for fraudulent votes without charging crime upon innocent laborers. As I was a voter in San Francisco, where my family resided, I crossed the bay twice that day, and heard from lips corrupt enough for anything what was going to be done and what had been done. A man of shrewdness seeking help in an ill cause would never seek it in the camps of industry when a city was near him. That these wretches might pretend they were from the Redwoods is likely enough, for the horde of voters who went to New York from Philadelphia were "pipe layers" when the Croton aqueduct was being laid in the former city.

As to the men of the Redwoods, permit me to say there is not in California or elsewhere a more peaceable, orderly, industrious or worthy class of men. They are brought together from distant points - from Maine, Massachusetts, Vermont, New York, Kentucky, Wisconsin, Ohio, Missouri, Illinois, South Carolina, Texas, Oregon, France, England, and God knows where. Yet all is harmony. Not indeed without faults, but with no very bad ones. We know no east, no west, no north, no south. I correct myself, sir: we do know them all, and after all, and as thoroughly as any, we know and honor our adopted State, and shall be right glad and happy when her politicians are as honest, patriotic, industrious and faithful in the discharge of their duties as the men of the

REDWOODS.

Daily Alta California, Volume 4, Number 84, 26 March 1853