Letter

Scope and content:

Written from "Off San Domingo." Letter regards the end of the Civil War.

Language:

English .

Other descriptive data:

Off San Domingo
19 May 1865

My dear Sir:
We expect to be in Havana next Monday. I have seen New York papers of 2nd. Taking for true what they say this Confederacy has come to a miserable wreck. I write this now for the chance of finding in Havana a vessel ready to take it away. Brave, will go home from Havana, but it will take a day or two there for him to get thro' with his business. In the mean time my friends will be anxious to know what I intend to do. I do not know where they are. I take the liberty of sending this to you thinking you will guess whence it comes, and hoping you will not consider it inconsistent with your new relations, to give it the proper direction.

I was utterly astounded at the brick-row tumble of our armies; and at the ignoble end of the Confederacy I am grieved and mortified beyond expression, My friends will know to whom and to what I attribute the great calamities that have been brought upon us. They need not have been. But as gloomy as the record is, and as black as is the mirror of the future, now is the time to be stout and brave and to rub it bright. The soil of Virginia has now for me no charms save those which memory flings around it. At present it is red with blood and bitter with the tears of those who were and are very precious, and its future is black with misery and utterly horrid. I have no wish to see it, and long to withdraw from it those who graced it, and those who made it very dear to my heart. In my judgment the only course that becomes them and that is left to those noble sons and daughters who have graced the fall of the noble old state is expatriation. There are too many voices coming up in bloody, to cry from her battlefields to admit any to tarry there now, who can get away. And I go from Havana with the design of finding for them a new country, and of obtaining such advantages as will induce 1000s to come. And among the first are my wife's brothers my own kin and our immediate friends especially such as those of Ridgway and others. Please consult your friend [L.E.] upon this subject. The discussion of it involves many considerations, considerations not so much of the present as of the future. The future of every true hearted Virginian is a life dragged out under the yoke amidst secret spies and truculent informers. Remaining on the [soil] their doom is that of a proscribed race.

The best service that I can now make the state is to propose an asylum to which her sons can flee and sit under their own vines and fig trees. Your nephew goes home over for the purpose of developing our plans and with the hope of seeing it received with favor by those whose presence and society would make us at home in any country. My wife has a diamond and [chain]. They will tell her if she will consult them who I seek to plant that home.

I wish 2 you would join me, if possible, and for several reasons - One is he is a better farmer than I am, and another is I shall if at all successful have more to do that I can attend to. Discuss the subject frankly and freely among our own friends, but privately and by letter, not publically nor in print, until I have something clear and definite to propose - which I hope to be at least this much:- [Leave] to come into the country with our effects without any duties of any sort, a grant of Lands exemption for a term of years from taxation and military conscription &. Perhaps other terms more or less advantageous may be obtained. In the mean time broach the subject to the two generals, big and little - to Will's uncles and brothers, to Jessie, to the "Squires" boys and his sisters - to Jno. B. his brothers and nephews to Frank and his and their whole circle of friends - not forgetting mechanics of various sorts. I hope to be ready for the pioneers to come early in the winter if not before. They can make ready for a larger number to follow a few months later and they for a still larger number and soon. Tell L.E. I intend to pick out a settlement so sickly that everybody will want the Doctor and pay him too and so healthy that the old people will just dry up and blow away. Hey Ho!

Subjects:

United States—History—Civil War, 1861-1865
Correspondence

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