While these sad days and nights of heaviness hung over us, we were painfully conscious that some of our own people misunderstood my husband's position in New York. Our having left Virginia was resented at the time, and now General Pryor's avowed belief that the salvation of the South could only be assured by acquiescence in the inevitable, and in the full exercise of justice to the negro, was most unacceptable. This was before the right of suffrage had been conceded to the negro; in the interval between the fall of the Confederacy and the Reconstruction period,—an interval during which the South was in a condition of resentment and agitation which portended a possible renewal of the conflict,—one of General Pryor's friends wrote him of the feeling against him and the cause.

The following answer to this letter was sent by my husband to the Richmond Whig, and puts him on record before the world at a time when such opinions were decidedly adverse to the feelings of many of his own personal friends. It required courage to write this letter. Since that time the prophetic words have been fully justified by subsequent events, and the unwelcome sentiments are to-day fully indorsed by the South. They are pregnant with wisdom, 326perhaps as much needed now as at the time they were uttered.

"New York, October 5, 1867.

"My dear Sir: I was apprised before the receipt of your letter that a certain paper of Virginia had stigmatized me as a 'Radical' and had otherwise imputed to me sentiments inimical to the interests of the South. But the silly story I disdained to contradict, while it rested on the authority of the irresponsible person who propagated it. Since you say that my silence is construed into a sort of acquiescence in the reproach, I empower you to repel the accusation with the utmost energy of indignant denial. I have not the vanity to imagine that my opinions are of the least consequence to any one; but, because they have been brought into controversy, and have been the occasion of subjecting me to some unmerited animadversion, I will tell you very frankly and freely in what relation I stand to the politics of the day.

"In the first place, then, neither with politics nor parties have I the least concern or connection. On the downfall of the Confederacy I renounced forever every political aspiration, and resolved henceforth to address myself to the care of my family and the pursuit of my profession. But for all that I have not repudiated the obligations of good citizenship. When I renewed my oath of allegiance to the union, I did so in good faith and without reservation; and as I understand that oath, it not only restrains me from acts of positive hostility to the government, but pledges me to do my utmost for its welfare and stability. Hence, while I am more immediately concerned to see the South restored to its former prosperity, I am anxious that the whole country, and all classes, may be reunited on the basis of common interest and fraternal regard. And this object, it appears to me, can only be attained by conceding to all classes the 327unrestricted rights guaranteed them by the laws and by obliterating as speedily and as entirely as possible the distinctions which have separated the North and the South into hostile sections.

"With this conviction, while I pretend to no part in politics, I have not hesitated, in private discourse, to advise my friends in the South frankly to 'accept the situation'; to adjust their ideas to the altered state of affairs; to recognize and respect the rights of the colored race; to cultivate relations of confidence and good-will toward the people of the North; to abstain from the profitless agitations of political debate; and to employ their energies in the far more exigent and useful work of material reparation and development. Striving out of regard to the South to inculcate that lesson of prudent conduct, I have urged such arguments as these: That the negro is, in no sense, responsible for the calamities we endure; that towards us he has ever conducted himself with kindness and subordination; that he is entitled to our compassion, and to the assistance of our superior intelligence in the effort to attain a higher state of moral and intellectual development; that to assume he was placed on this theatre as a reproach to humanity and a stumbling-block to the progress of civilization would be to impeach the wisdom and goodness of Providence; that, cons............