AUTOGRAPH LETTER, SIGNED, TO A. D. BANKS, ON LAW FIRM LETTERHEAD OF "HARRIS & GEORGE, ATTORNEYS AND COUNSELORS AT LAW", JACKSON, MISS. 26 DECEMBER 1874, DENOUNCING RECONSTRUCTION AND "NEGRO GOVERNMENT" DURING THE INFAMOUS VICKSBURG RIOTS

Jackson, 1874. Single page, written in ink on recto only, 9-3/4" x 7-3/4." Old mailing folds, three minor ink blots. Very Good. Signed, "W. P. Harris."

The author Wiley Pope Harris (1818-1891) had served in both the antebellum United States Congress and the Confederate Congress. During the 1850s he opposed the increasingly powerful American, or Know-Nothing Party, whose anti-Catholic, anti-immigration message attracted support from Whigs and Democrats. Here he conveys his gloomy assessment of Congressional Reconstruction to his correspondent A. D. Banks, "Can't you take occasion to stick a few ideas into the so-called statesmen at Washington. (truncated) Tell them to back out of a bad scrape. Negro government cannot be republican because it must be irresponsible government, which is a contradiction in terms. You know that irresponsibility complete and total flows directly in Negro government from the representative principle in the government. We can't have a responsible government here because it is a representative Negro government. Irresponsible government can only be kept up by military force. It will run down in spite of everything, and under the most conservative spirit of forbearance in the people."
Angry former Confederates had simultaneously expressed similar sentiments, but in a far less gentlemanly manner. Rioters had killed an indeterminate number of Blacks, certainly more than 75, in a violent demonstration of unreconstructed Confederate opinion.
Five days before the date of this letter, President Grant dispatched federal troops to the city. Marauding gangs of Red Shirts nonetheless re-established a white supremacist government in Mississippi over the following year. (Inventory #: 41016)