Semi-Weekly Mississippian [Jackson, MS], September 25, 1860
Extract from a private letter, Houston, Texas, to a friend in Hartford, Ct.:
Tell your abolition friends to go on, and soon they will have the pleasure of seeing the negro reduced to such a state of hopeless bondage that they may well pity them. I solemnly declare that to-day the negro is not as free as he was two or five years ago; and why?—Simply because his master has been goaded on to desperation by incendiary acts and speeches. One year ago all was peace and quietness here. The negro was allowed to go out to have dances and frolics; to-day one dare not show his head after 9 o’clock in the evening. Seven companies of patrol are organized and guard the city each night. Sixteen horse patrol scour the county around.—Forty-eight vigilance men say live, banish or die, as the proof may go to show. And so it is all over the country. Men are hung every day by the decision of planters, lawyers, judges and ministers. It is no hot, impetuous act, but cool, stern justice. It is the saving of wife and daughter, mother and sister from the hand of desecration. It is the stopping of scenes that would
make the Druses and Turks blush for shame.
We had one more fire.
Yours truly.
***