Autograph Letter Signed. 3 pp.+ original mailing envelope. To Robert R. Hamphill, Abbeville Court House, South Carolina Nesbitt reports his crops are “doing tolerable well.” Unfortunately, “There were two attempts to fire the town this week but were discovered before any damage was done. We still have the Soulders with us yet there has not been many arrests of late. I would be glad if things would become more quiett. We have had enough of interruptions and it is time to stop. I have been trying to get you some subscribers to your paper and hope I will succeed, there is many of our people left the State…” Hemphill, a lawyer and journalist, the son of an antebellum family of Unionists, served in the Confederate Army during the Civil War and published a newspaper that was moderately Democratic, decrying violence and even praising Black government officials – so long as they voted the Democratic ticket. No doubt his plantation friends wished the interruptions to their farming would simply go away. After the South Carolina election of 1870 which returned a Republican majority, including many African-Americans, to the state Legislature, the Ku Klux Klan began a campaign of mass terror, especially in Spartanburg County, invading the homes of freed slaves and whipping, beating and murdering those who refused to renounce the Republican Party. President Grant declared South Carolina to be in active rebellion, suspended habeus corpus, and sent reinforcements of Union Army troops into the rebellious areas. The soldiers made mass arrests and tried to crush the Klan by convictions in the courts, though white jurors were not sympathetic.
Autograph Letter Signed. 3 pp.+ original mailing envelope. To Robert R. Hamphill, Abbeville Court House, South Carolina Nesbitt reports his crops are “doing tolerable well.” Unfortunately, “There were two attempts to fire the town this week but were discovered before any damage was done. We still have the Soulders with us yet there has not been many arrests of late. I would be glad if things would become more quiett. We have had enough of interruptions and it is time to stop. I have been trying to get you some subscribers to your paper and hope I will succeed, there is many of our people left the State…” Hemphill, a lawyer and journalist, the son of an antebellum family of Unionists, served in the Confederate Army during the Civil War and published a newspaper that was moderately Democratic, decrying violence and even praising Black government officials – so long as they voted the Democratic ticket. No doubt his plantation friends wished the interruptions to their farming would simply go away. After the South Carolina election of 1870 which returned a Republican majority, including many African-Americans, to the state Legislature, the Ku Klux Klan began a campaign of mass terror, especially in Spartanburg County, invading the homes of freed slaves and whipping, beating and murdering those who refused to renounce the Republican Party. President Grant declared South Carolina to be in active rebellion, suspended habeus corpus, and sent reinforcements of Union Army troops into the rebellious areas. The soldiers made mass arrests and tried to crush the Klan by convictions in the courts, though white jurors were not sympathetic.
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