Robert W. Flournoy
to
Thaddeus Stevens
New Albany, Miss.
Nov 20th, 1865
Hon. Thaddeus Stevens
Sir,
Having written to Senators [Henry] Wilson & [Charles]
Sumner, touching subjects of vital interest to the country and especially to
the freedmen, I take the liberty of addressing you because I believe there is
no person to whom I can communicate who is more disposed to see justice extended
to that unfortunate people than yourself. I am a Southern man by
birth and education, and at one time partook of all the prejudices incident
to one so circumstanced. I was until the abolition of slavery
a large slave holder, and my interest led me to sustain the institution.
It now being destroyed I look at the whole question in a very different light
than that in which I once viewed it.
I in common with a few men here am anxious to see the
negro have all the rights of a citizen, and I wish to see him possessed of
and protected in those rights, and as the end to the securing [of] those
privileges and rights, I wish to see continued in the ascendancy that party
who has been instrumental in giving him freedom and to whom he can alone
look or hope for protection. This is my honest and heart-felt
desire.
To leave the negro to be dealt with by those whose
prejudices are of the most bitter character against him, will be
barbarous. Look at the character of the legislation already
carried out and proposed: does it not clearly evince a
determination that wrongs and aggression upon that unfortunate people
shall be continued[?] And whether the opinion is well or
ill founded, it, is very widespread here, that the president intends
to sustain such a course; and hence the south is encouraged in
the course she is now pursuing, and today not only is the hatred
intensified against the freedmen[,] but is deep rooted against the free
states and against the Union. Whatever genuine Union
sentiment was forming and would in time have grown up, has been
checked by Mr. Johnson's course[;] he has made a great mistake.
He is now the favourite [sic] of all the diseffected [sic] elements here,
in fact [of] all but the very few who through the whole war amidst
persecutions and dangers remained though with fear and trembling true
to the Union.
We had hoped when the government had succeeded
in crushing out the rebellion treason would if not punished at least by
the government been held dishonorable. But instead of that
traitors are elevated to offices of honor and will soon be knocking at
the doors of Congress claiming seats, elected by traitors as a reward
for efforts in attempting to destroy the very government they are now
asking to take a part in governing. To admit such men[,] many
of whom have defeated union men upon no other grounds but that they were
union men[,] will be rewarding treason. And their objects to
renew in the halls of congress those disgraceful scenes so supercillious [sic]
and overbearing [and] characteristic of southern men for the last twenty
years. Those men will expect you to repeal all disabilities
against them because they were active in their overt treason against
the government.
By admitting them you will strengthen a party
north who is as treasonable as any people here, whose public men and papers
did do, and are doing[,] more to cause the rebellion and keep up a hatred
of the Union and union than [any]thing else. The hope is wide
spread that a foreign war will occur; that these men may strike again
at the Union, and failing that they hope to get up an internal revolution
and by the assistance of copperheads to control the government by physical
force and crush any party or man north who they believe was instrumental
in wresting from them their treasured institution of slavery.
And the feeling is becoming general here that slavery will be reestablished
in other words. Those whom the government and in many instances
the states have declared free, shall be returned into slavery for their
benefit. And these are the hopes and expectations you are
called upon to cherish and foster. And the badge of disgrace
is to attach to men, and the lives of themselves and their families
endangered at the south, because they did not raise patricidal hands against
the government their fathers had established for them, and which they
believed was the best that ever existed.
He who supposes all danger is over knows but
little of real southern feelings; there is comparatively no
nationality here, the south would rejoice over defeats which the
United States might meet with in conflicts with foreign governments.
And the policy of removing the military from rebellious states is simply
suicidal. To save a few millions of money, you are preparing the
way for the spending of billions and the sacrifice of thousands of valuable
lives. The whole policy of the government as proposed to be
conducted by the president is wrong, he is enlisting no gratitude upon
the part of the south, he is creating no generous patriotism, which embraces
all sections of the country, or that feeling of fraternal regard for all
the people of our common government. The South has yet to learn
a lesson which five years of disaster has not taught her[:]
she is moody, proud, arrogant, and vindictive; gloating over her
delayed revenge, and anxiously waiting for the opportunity to strike.
Such being her condition you are called upon to extend to her a generous
confidence, and shake the hands still dripping with the blood of slaughtered
union men and soldiers.
Send the applicants for seats upon the floor of congress
back home, and let the rebellious states know and feel that there is a power
left that can reach and punish treason. But the other day a negro
woman was killed by a white man, and not three miles from where I write a
negro man was accused of stealing cotton. There was no proof to
convict him[;] at the dead hour of the night he was taken out of his bed
from his wife, and this morning I hear his body has been found suspended by
the neck to a tree[;] the murder occured [sic] three or four nights
ago. This would not have taken place had the company of
troops stationed at Pontotoc remained. There will be no attempts
made to investigate this horrible act by the authorities or people here.
It would cost any man his life to attempt to do so. Is this to be
the end of all that has been done to accomplish the freedom of the negro, is
he to be left in the hands of his bitterest foes, who will seek their
disappointed vengeance upon him, for the acts of others[?]
Yours respectfully,
R. W. Flournoy
SOURCE: Robert W. Flournoy to Thaddeus Stevens,
20 November 1865, Thaddeus Stevens Papers, Library of Congress.
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