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13 ________ c.u. Solar 20 Aug 1866 My dear Sir, I received through the mail your two
pamphlet entitled, “Considerations for Bankers” and “A new system of Paper
Currency,” for which please accept my thanks. As soon as I have read and
considered them, it will give me pleasure to comply with your request, if in my
opinion “the system is one that can be introduced at the South”? No one who does not
come among us and see for himself how completely ruined we are, can form any
idea of our great frustrations. Before the war we were very prosperous, but
like all agricultural people, very few of us were accumulating money, or that
which could be readily converted into money, such as stocks in Banking and
other companies [?]. When a planter [?] made more than the wants of his family
required, he generally added to his capital by the purchase of lands or Negroes,
and was usually more or less in debt. The result of the war has deprived us of
the most valuable portion of the capital thus invested, and left us in debts,
generally for the purchase of Negroes. Our great difficulty now, is to keep our
lands, pay these debts and work our plantation, of course, a people who cannot
pay their debts, or work their plantations except upon the faith of the crops
to be made, are unable to furnish any specific capital to establish Banking
_____ that will provide them with the money required to pay wages, buy
provisions, ______ and implements, and restore [?] the stock and machinery
destroyed by the conquering army. If your system can make our lands available
to produce a currency that will be received, and which will give us the means
organize a new system of labor, restore our plantations and diversity our
pursuits, it will be the very thing most needful, enable us to work our lands
profitably, produce those staples so useful to the world and on which our
farmer property was based. I do not pretend to be instructed in the science of
Finance, but I do not see why a currency which represents an invested dollar
should not be as good and as safe as that which represents a specific dollar,
which is liable to fluctuation, being sometimes worth a greater—sometimes a
lesser per cent. But as I have not yet studied your system, I will not now
pretend to offer any speculations as for its merits or demerits. All that our
people need now is money on[?] credit, we are willing to work, we are able to
work, we frankly acknowledge our defeat, accept manfully our condition and
earnestly desire to be let alone and permitted to work our this great problem
to work out this great problem of endless [?] emancipation and no compensation,
without the interference of political enthusiasts, or religious fanatics. No
set of men understand the Negro better than the Southern Planters and
Gentlemen, and the Negro has no better friends. They feel and know this too,
and if not corrupted and ruined by vicious Legislation and wicked
intermeddling, the relations of Proprietor and Laborer will even [?] be
adjusted and the [?] happiness and prosperity of both races promoted. It is our
interest now, to educate and elevate these people, to improve their condition
socially and morally, and to make them an intelligent and contented laboring
class. This may be done by patience and kindness, and no men will ______ their
confidence and stimulate their ambition in a higher degree than their old
masters. I do not believe we can make them as profitable as the white Laborer
of I am sorry to see,
that the systematic misrepresentations of our people is still continued and
still more grieved to know, that these misrepresentations are believed by many.
I do not suppose, that history will furnish an example of a people who were so
terribly in earnest, who have so frankly and honestly acknowledged their defeat
and made up their minds to accept the condition and perform all the duties
required of them by law. Of course, we are mortified and disappointed; but we
are a fair [?] and truthful people and having acknowledged in defeat and
failure, we are honestly determined to do our duty as good citizens. In no
class of the community is this disposition more conspicuously manifested than
in the returned soldiers. It is grand to see how cheerfully they walk and how
earnestly they are endeavoring to repair our _____ fortunes. I have as good an
opportunity to know the temper and disposition of our people as any other
public man in the state, my duties as a judge of the Law Court require me to
travel all over the State, each judge having to preside in a different Circuit
at each Term of the Court, and from my very personal intercourse and
observations, and conversations with my Brethren, I am satisfied that I make a
correct representation of the exact condition of the public mind. I do not sympathize
with those Southern men who speak of the late war as a “Rebellion” and
of us as “the so called confederate states,”nor do I think that our
people generally like to hear our public men using such forms of speech; we do
not object to the use of them by Southern men, but they grate harshly on the
ear when they come from Southern men. We believed that we had the right to
decide [?], that it is the great Republican, States Rights doctrine taught in
the Very truly and
Respectfully Your obt. Servt. A. P. Aldrich Mr. Spooner |