"Hiram Revels' letter to President Grant split from Looting the South

Andersonh1

Brigadier General
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Joined
Jan 12, 2016
Location
South Carolina
From Hiram Rhodes Revels to President Grant in response to Gov. Ames and his fellow Republican cohorts:

"Letter dated November 6, 1875.

….Since reconstruction, the masses of my people have been, as it were, enslaved in mind by unprincipled adventurers, who, caring nothing for country, were willing to stoop to anything no matter how infamous, to secure power to themselves and perpetuate it. My people are naturally Republicans and always will be, but as they grow older in freedom so do they in wisdom. A great portion of them have learned that they were being used as mere tools, and, as in the late election, not being able to correct existing evils among themselves, they determined by casting their ballots against those unprincipled adventurers, to overthrow them…. My people have been told by these schemers, when men have been placed on the ticket who were notoriously corrupt and dishonest, that they must vote for them; that the salvation of the party depended upon it; that the man who scratched a ticket was not a Republican. This is only one of the many means these unprincipled demagogues have devised to perpetuate the intellectual bondage of my people. To defeat this policy, at the late election men, irrespective of race, color, or party affiliation, united, and voted together against men known to be incompetent and dishonest. I cannot recognize, nor do the mass of my people who read, recognize the majority of the officials who have been in power for the past two years as Republicans…."

http://www.ncpedia.org/Biography/RevelsLetter

Mr. Revels understood what the carpetbaggers were doing in the South, and what use they had for the black population. Contrast him with some modern day historians who seem intent on denying the plain truth.
 
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