This issue was broadly made by the action of Mr. Lincolns enemies in the last congress & is now vehemently pressed by the same leaders who still seek to defeat the policy which you & he inaugurated to preserve the Republic. This makes the new epoch which is to take direction from your hand. Can you give it the impulse you desire with the forces in your Cabinet every way complicated, if not absolutely combined with the hostile elements against you in & out of congress? Your Cabinet have no strength or weight in the country except among those who are inimical to your policy and they have neither the desire or power to draw them to its aid, and is there no danger that the retention of these men who are without the confidence of the great body of the liberal Republicans and Democrats, who united alone support your policy, will lose you the confidence of the only men in the nation upon whom you can rely?
It appears to me that the change you contemplate ought to be made at once, as new combinations of parties are forming throughout the country looking to coming elections, which will certainly produce new combinations in the already elected congress at its next Session. If you are to have a control in these combinations, it must come from the influence you exert over public opinion by the administration you propose & the men you select to make it manifest to the people & give it the executive stamp. If the present cabinet remain your attitude to the next congress will be much the same with that of Mr. Lincoln to the last, with the majority of those calling themselves his party friends hostile to his measures and to his succession and poisoning the feelings of the masses of the people, solicitous for the success of the cause for which he labored, by lack of confidence as to the means employed. By the selection of a new cabinet you not only get rid of the odium incurred by the Rump left to you, but you may constitute it of men who will bring to you an accession of strength from all parties who concur in your views of the re-organization which the late conflicts have made necessary. You will of course turn out no man who has not distinguished himself from first to last against all the principles at the bottom of the rebellion—& who has not given his whole strength in bringing out the glorious reform that has banished slavery from the continent. Conspicuous men of this kind may be found of Democratic antecedents—of Republican antecedents—of Whig antecedents, blending both—such you may draw into your administration able & honorable men of these original types ready to merge all minor differences of by gone parties in the great Democratic Republican ideas of Mr. Jefferson of the Union of States combined by the popular will under a national Executive & Legislature giving full life to the constitution.
This is your mission at this moment on entering the new Era of our history and let me entreat you to open the process of the new elections and of the creation of new parties in the approaching Congress with a new Cabinet strongly imbued with your opinions, entirely worthy of your confidence and of a caste calculated to win the confidence of men of all parties, who are willing to embrace the scheme of restoration to which you commit your administration in the nomination of the heads of its Departments.
The Democracy, I learn, north and South will make its nominations for National & State Representatives & for other functionaries of men of the type to which I have Just referred. The Republicans will be divided in their nominations, a portion going for the scheme of the Faneuil Hall manifesto derived from the movement which took the shape of the bill passed & presented to the President at the last congress to defeat his plan of re-Union. If you declare your design to the nation by the creation of a new cabinet to express & to execute it distinctly & patently, the party opposed to it who would go to the people & come into congress as the friends of the administration, but really to defeat its policy, will I believe be reduced to a faction. But if you allow them to proceed under the shadow of a great party name, & under prestige already acquired by them of swaying the Cabinet they will command in Congress as at the last session & through it may command the country unless overthrown by the Democracy which will take a stand against it and the Rump Cabinet.
Let me explain my view by supposing a practical illustration. We know that the States of New York & Pennsylvania were canvassed by the Republicans & Democrats in the last Presidential election under the disadvantage to the latter of an anti-war and anti-administration platform. The Democrats lost the election by some eight or ten thousand, where many hundred thousand votes were cast—the returning soldiers carrying it for the Republicans. The Democrats will present themselves at the approaching election on your programme. The candidates who will poll as Republicans on the programme presented in the bill of last Session to Mr. Lincoln to defeat his & your policy & which is now proclaimed at Faneuil Hall as the party test, will claim your support & that of Messrs Seward & Stanton, who as Cabinet ministers represent those states in your administration—suppose confidence in you personally and devotion to the plan of reconstruction you promise them should induce liberal Democrats and Republicans to coalesce so as to give the triumph to the tickets nominated in contravention of your policy, simply because they were called administration candidates. You would then have an appearance of an administration success but it would not be your success. It would be that of the Rump Parliament & Cabinet. It would establish the Faneuil Hall doctrine & defeat your policy. It would accomplish the objects of Messrs Seward & co. so far as their personal & party aims are concerned, but your power at this moment of vital interest would be paralized and your future put in “cold obstruction.” If however you were at once to make a new Cabinet drawn from the different sections of the country and representing the various parties in it, yet agreeing to support your plan of reconstruction, on an issue so essential, it would be no matter what party organization returned members, men who gave in this adhesion would become identified with the administration. Their election would be your success and in this epoch of reconstruction would create a new party, embracing the whole Union, adverse to that of Faneuil Hall limited to a northern latitude and exulting in a revolutionary creed. If the old Cabinet be continued while this formation of parties is in progress it is to be apprehended that the organization which approved the existing Cabinet on the ground of its Bastile arrests—incarcerations without accusation and release upon payments of such money as the prisoner possessed or could command on the ground also of its leanings to France giving countenance to the invasion of our continent—on the ground of its demonstrations of hostility to England calculated to Justify the aristocracy there in acceding to the invitations of Napoleon to Join him in recognizing the confederacy & defy the feelings of the British commonalty in favor of our Government, will gain such strength as to induce it to look to the attainment of the control of the Government independently of the Executive head whose policy it adopts.
The vote of the south will be drawn almost as an unit to the side of that party which it finds in opposition to a ministry known to be hostile to its dearest rights in the Union & confederated with the scheme promulgated at Faneuil Hall, which would deprive its States of equality as States, would create a war of caste & a war of Sections a war of factions breaking up the ancient foundations of the constitution.
Nor is it to be supposed that France will withdraw from Mexico as long as a Minister is retained who has already conceded to her the right to remain there. Nor can it be hoped that men of character can be found in our Country who will risk themselves to raise a force to expel Maximilian from Mexico without involving the country in a foreign war, so long as France & her Puppet have a steadfast friend in the Secretary of State, whose appointee and instrument is still retained in the War Department. So long as they are retained the country may be pardoned even for distrusting your disposition to maintain the inviolability of our continent from the invasion of European Powers.
Yo mo af fd F P. Blair
P.S. The appointment of a new cabinet with a firm aspect looking towards mexico, might, without giving offence to France, manifest a determination that would induce a Surrender of the Scheme of giving “the ascendancy to the latin race in the South am
erican Continent.”
DEFENDING “PURE FREEDOM”:
ALABAMA, AUGUST 1865
Colored People of Mobile to Andrew J. Smith
Mobile August 2d 1865
Sir
We the colored people of Mobile laboring under a deep sense of gratitude to the Government of the United States and understanding that it is the Military Arm and not the civil who has been the instrumentality of giving to us and to our children the blessed boon of pure freedom.
Next to our heavenly Father we revere the good old Constitution of the United States, and now that it acknowledges our existance we are unanimous as a people to die in “its” defence.
We take this method of stating to you believing you to be a friend to our people and to freedom, believing that you do not countenance or sanction any act done in opposition or in Confliction with the policy of the government in relation to our people, and firmly believing that you will mete justice and not Southern Civil law to us. Therefore we take this method of laying before you the following resolutions.
Resolved that we the Colored people of Mobile and “its” vicinity are determined to work hand in hand with the Government and that we will state our grievances to that power who freed us from chains and slavery.
Resolved that the civil law, as administered to us, is in confliction with various acts and orders issued by the Military since the ocupation of Mobile as for Example.
General Orders No 6.
In all Courts and judicial proceedings in this district the testimony of freed or colored people will be received and admitted according to the same principles and rules of Evidence that apply to white persons.
By Order of Brevet Major Genl
C. C. Andrews
Resolved that we can prove facts showing where Mayor Slough departs wilfully and knowingly from above order, as in the case of Ferdinand Smith, Pastor of Zions Church who was fined on the morning of the 2d inst and was not permitted to appear even as a spectator in Court and was not called by his name but treated disrespectfully in said Mayors Court. Also, Case of Hugh McKeever (white man) who knocked down a Colored woman whose Evidence was not admitted in Said Court.
Resolved that we think shutting our people out of the Civil Courts of Mobile does not shut us out from the halls of Justice, for Justice and white winged mercy have forever fled from the Legislative halls of the South and particularly when men who hate our people are ocupying high seats in said halls of Southern Civil Legislation.
Resolved that aforesaid resolution will also apply to Senators, Congressmen, delegates for Conventions and all others who may make, frame, or cause to be framed, laws for our people and who do not or may not guide themselves according to the Spirit of the Constitution and all proclamations issued by our Lamented President Abraham Lincoln.
Resolved that we the Colored people of Mobile know and feel that we are free and while we bless the government that freed us we will also point out the derelections of officials who may be clothed with a little authority and who take a keen delight in yet keeping us in Semibondage for their own pecuniary advantage.
Resolved that if our testimony is not taken in Courts that corrupt officials will yet grind the face of the poor, and will also deprive widows and orphans and our people of their inheritance, as for example the step taken by the Methodists South (in this city of Mobile) to dispossess the members of the little Zion of their Zion (unprecedented and audacious Robbery) and numberless other wrongs too numerous here to mention.
Resolved that a committee of three (3) Colored men be appointed to wait on Genl Smith and tender to him respectfully above resolutions.
A. Saxon
C. Trainer
F. D. Taylor
Committee
That reports come to us from all sources that our people are cruelly maltreated in the interior of this State of Alabama. That the planters will not yet let our people go but cruelly scourges them and shoots them if they remonstrate or plead for their freedom that numerous tales of untold horror have reached us in Mobile which eye witnesses can prove tales of terrible and heartrending atrocitys which if related not to a civilized and christian community but to the beasts of the forest to the rocks the trees and stones that at the recital of such wrongs those mute and inanimate things would be thrown into Confusion.
Colored People of Mobile
“SEND US OUR WAGES”:
OHIO, AUGUST 1865
Jourdon Anderson to P. H. Anderson
LETTER FROM A FREEDMAN TO HIS OLD MASTER.
The following is a genuine document. It was dictated by the old servant, and contains his ideas and forms of expression.
[Cincinnati Commercial.
DAYTON, Ohio, August 7, 1865.
To my Old Master, Col. P. H. ANDERSON, Big Spring, Tennessee.
SIR: I got your letter and was glad to find that you had not forgotten Jordan, and that you wanted me to come back and live with you again, promising to do better for me than anybody else can. I have often felt uneasy about you. I thought the Yankees would have hung you long before this for harboring Rebs. they found at your house. I suppose they never heard about your going to Col. Martin’s to kill the Union soldier that was left by his company in their stable. Although you shot at me twice before I left you, I did not want to hear of your being hurt, and am glad you are still living. It would do me good to go back to the dear old home again and see Miss Mary and Miss Martha and Aliea, Esther, Green and Lee. Give my love to them all, and tell them I hope we will meet in the better world, if not in this. I would have gone back to see you all when I was working in the Nashville Hospital, but one of the neighbors told me Henry intended to shoot me if he ever got a chance.
I want to know particularly what the good chance is you propose to give me. I am doing tolerably well here; I get $25 a month, with victuals and clothing; have a comfortable home for Mandy (the folks here call her Mrs. Anderson), and the children, Milly Jane and Grundy, go to school and are learning well; the teacher says Grundy has a head for a preacher. They go to Sunday-School, and Mandy and me attend church regularly. We are kindly treated; sometimes we overhear others saying, “Them colored people were slaves” down in Tennessee. The children feel hurt when they hear such remarks, but I tell them it was no disgrace in Tennessee to belong to Col. Anderson. Many darkies would have been proud, as I used to was, to call you master. Now, if you will write and say what wages you will give me, I will be better able to decide whether it would be to my advantage to move back again.
As to my freedom, which you say I can have, there is nothing to be gained on that score, as I got my free-papers in 1864 from the Provost-Marshal-General of the Department at Nashville. Mandy says she would be afraid to go back without some proof that you are sincerely disposed to treat us justly and kindly—and we have concluded to test your sincerity by asking you to send us our wages for the time we served you. This will make us forget and forgive old sores, and rely on your justice and friendship in the future. I served you faithfully for thirty-two years, and Mandy twenty years, at $25 a month for me, and $2 a week for Mandy. Our earnings would amount to $11,680. Add to this the interest for the time our wages has been kept back and deduct what you paid for our clothing and three doctor’s visits to me, and pulling a tooth for Mandy, and the balance will show what we are in justice entitled to. Please send the money by Adams Express, in care of V. Winters, esq., Dayton, Ohio. If you fail to pay us for faithful labors in the past we can have little faith in your promises in the future. We trust the good Maker has opened your eyes to the wrongs which you and your fathers have done to me and my fathers, in making us toil for you for generations without recompense. Here I draw my wages every Saturday night, but in Tennessee there was never any pay day for the negroes any more than for the horses and cows. Surely there will be a day of reckoning for those who defraud the laborer of his hire.
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