CB: This sounds like a specific measure to dissuade Southern states from disenfranchising ex-slaves.
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To the Right Honorable Charles Brown, of the slave free state of Michigan.
Dear Sir,
I think that I can discern something forming there in the play of shadows on this cold December evening. As the moonlight falls across the snowy stubble, it marks out something of a long overgrown, and almost forgotten road bearing South. From the wide gauge of its ruts and its beaten down center I surmise it was a road made by horse drawn caissons.
When I made the argument this summer that if the Governor of Texas were elected, we would be fighting to hold existing ground, I had no idea the fight would begin with the right to vote before the election could even be settled. How white of me. Please accept my apologies. Perhaps even the rash Mister Niles of the new abolitionists in France would concur.
We are told the Governor did not listen to the high court arguments yesterday. No doubt he didn't because his mind could only hold to the more limited question, did I win?
Regretfully, this evening the Supreme Court in its wisdom has acted to install the Governor who could not follow their reasonings, and thus deliver us to the greater of two fools. Alas, the People's more humble wisdom was content to choose the lesser of two evils. So much for the rule of law over the vote of the people.
If you've noted the arcane phrasing in my employ, it issues from my readings of late. These have been tracing out the old ruts in the dead grasses and snow from among the names Webster, Calhoun, Douglas, Clay, Sumner, and Scott from their letters, papers, and arguments once put forth as we traveled this forgotten path---and there at its end to greet our enemy in desperate battles. It would seem, Sir, they have risen from their moldering graves along this way and beckon us. Come, let us meet again they seem to say, as in the old days.
On the eve.
Respectfully,
Charles Alfred Grimes, from the slave free state of California.