[AUTOGRAPH LETTER, SIGNED, FROM JEFFERSON DAVIS TO A FORMER CONFEDERATE SOLDIER, REAFFIRMING HIS "DEVOTION TO MISSISSIPPI" AND "ABHORRENCE OF THE VAMPYRES WHO HAVE SUCKED HER LIFE BLOOD" DURING RECONSTRUCTION]

Davis, Jefferson: [Reconstruction]

Published by Memphis, 1875

[3]pp., autograph letter, signed, on a folded quarto sheet. Plus original postmarked envelope and laid-in newspaper clipping. Old folds, some just starting to split. Minor soiling. Very good. A subtly abhorrent letter written from former Confederate President Jefferson Davis to former Rebel soldier S.D. Hewes, expressing Davis' disgust with Reconstruction and his cheerful approval for the success of the "Mississippi Plan" and the rampant racial violence and voter intimidation of the 1875 election. Davis' letter is chiefly concerned with Radical Republican Governor Adelbert Ames, a Union general who lead with distinction at Gettysburg and Petersburg. Though considered an honest man and one of the more successful Reconstruction governors fiscally, the presence of a one-time enemy in high office was of course anathema to Davis and his comrades. Here, he responds to a letter from a former Confederate soldier forwarding a newspaper clipping (still present) which purports to declare Davis' support for Ames. It states that "it is consoling to be informed that Mr. Jefferson Davis, in his late visit to Mississippi, expressed himself as very conservative, and that he believes Governor Ames to be honest, and lays every mistake made by him to his unfortunate surroundings." Mississippi soldier Hewes must have read this news aghast, and wrote to Davis to request verification. Davis responds with an emphatic rejection of the report, writing that "the confidence you felt in my devotion to Mississippi, and my abhorrence of the vampyres who have sucked her life blood, and slandered her people, was not misplaced; and I thank you for it." He goes on: "The slip you enclosed, and which is returned in this, is wholly unwarranted by any thing said by me. If I have not assumed to judge Gov. Ames, it was not that I hold his advisers responsible, nor could I ever have designated his misdeeds by so mild a word as 'mistakes.'" The "misdeeds" referred to by Davis were that Ames was elected primarily by Black voters, and that he had called in the National Guard to put down an armed White Supremacist coup against elected Black officials in Vicksburg which left dozens of African Americans dead. Ames again called on the Federal Government for support in response to widespread violence and intimidation in the 1875 election, but his requests were denied, and the number of murdered Black voters soared into the hundreds. Davis refers to these crimes as "the recent triumph of the people of Mississippi over the foreign hand which has so long oppressed them, by means of deluded negro voters," and affirms his belief that "If it be called conservatism, to guard the rights of each and every person, and promote the general prosperity and peace of the state; let us hope that both private citizens and public officers will be 'very conservative.'" Davis' letter also makes mention of the legislative arm of the Mississippi Plan, which involved the new, fraudulently elected Democratic majority drawing up articles of impeachment again Ames. While their investigation failed to find even a shred of evidence against the famously incorruptible Governor (Davis himself expresses his doubts that their arguments would be sufficient to "satisfy the judicial minds of two thirds of the Senate"), in the end Ames still resigned his position in 1876 rather than spend his entire term fighting a lengthy and expensive trial. Davis closes his letter with a scathing comment against the Republican newspaper which printed the article, assuring Hewes that "I recognize your twofold right as a Mississippian and as a Confederate soldier, to ask me to sustain your vindication of me, and therefore reply; though as a rule I do not notice what such papers as the 'Chronicle' say of me, and believe it would be safe in that connection to construe their statements by the rule applied to dreams." A striking letter from the former President of the Confederacy, revealing his unchanged beliefs and continued intima. Seller Inventory # WRCAM62569

Bibliographic Details

Title: [AUTOGRAPH LETTER, SIGNED, FROM JEFFERSON ...
Publisher: Memphis
Publication Date: 1875