Two Letters from the Hon. James B. Campbell, U.S. Senator Elect from South Carolina, on Public Affairs, and Our Duties to the Colored Race.


Two letters by Democrat James B. Campbell decrying the Reconstruction government of South Carolina. He argues that his party is “the best friend of the colored man” and that Republicans “...have never intended or expected the substantial and permanent advancement of the colored man. They aspire to use him, and…to array him in hostility against those with whom he was born…” (p4)

Campbell believes that Reconstruction is unconstitutional:

There was once a South Carolina—she was a State and had a history. ... The destroyer came, and there is now no South Carolina State. I do not call that limping, tottering experiment set up by bayonets, now on exhibition at Columbia—the shame and ridicule of the nation—a State. ... We live under a government put over us by usurpation, fraud, military power, and violence. It is not our government. ... It has subverted our Constitution and laws. ... That Constitution, (our Constitution), was carried by the same men into the Union at its foundation. It has been overturned by violence and its government declared “illegal.” This has been done in defiance of, and “outside the Constitution” which made the Union. (p6)

In a second letter here by U.S. Senator Elect Campbell, addressed to Democrats then assembled at a mass meeting in Abbeville, South Carolina, he describes African Americans as “credulous and ignorant” and rues their future: “If we discharge our duties to him and he still pursues the way of ruin, it will be his great irrevocable misfortune, and not our fault.” (p15)


Description: Two Letters from the Hon. James B. Campbell, U.S. Senator Elect from South Carolina, on Public Affairs, and Our Duties to the Colored Race.

Charleston [South Carolina]: Walker, Evans & Cogswell, Stationers and Printers, 1868. 15, [1]pp. Self wrappers; stitched. Two wood engraved portrait Toned and foxed, very good.

[3728938]

OCLC, thirteen copies under two accession numbers.


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