Letter denounces post-civil war racism

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MOUNT VERNON — The story is controversial. Official histories are often heavily influenced by those with power and money.

One of the things I love about writing a little local history column is that I’m not burdened with that kind of editorial interference. But there is a general social tendency to want to sweep ugly stories under the rug and pretend that everything is and has always been perfect.

So, this week’s column gives me a bit of a headache, because I know there are many people around who would rather not remember unpleasant past episodes, but I firmly believe that if we don’t confront our past mistakes, how can we fix them and move forward into a better future?

And so, I share an open letter that a group of Knox County (and Holmes County) veterans wrote to former Union General, and later Ohio Governor, Jacob Cox, which was published in the July 29, 1865 edition of the Daily Ohio Statesman, a Columbus newspaper.

I tend not to flinch at a disreputable story, but there are lines of decency, so I’m not going to type in a certain racial slur (yes, the one that starts with the letter N) that the soldiers used freely in their letter. The newspaper published the word without hesitation.

In the wake of the Civil War, there was much discussion about the future of former slaves. Many progressive people who had supported the abolition of slavery also favored granting ex-slaves full citizenship, including the right to vote for black men. Women’s suffrage was still decades away.

It’s no surprise that there were many opponents of black suffrage in central Ohio, as the area was known for its Southern sympathies during the war, including the farcical and brief rebellion known as Fort Fizzle that broke out in Holmes County in 1863 (and which I wrote about in a previous History Knox column, which, alas, I was unable to access).

With so many of its ancestral roots tracing back to Virginia, central Ohio was never firmly on the Union side of the war, and that’s why Knox County was chosen as the location for an important speech by Clement Vallandigham when he ran for president against Abraham Lincoln in 1864 (and which was also covered in an earlier, more accessible column as Knox Pages goes through its transition to a new website with a new computer system).

Clement Vallandigham: Notorious brass Clement Vallandigham was arrested for treason when he gave a speech at Mount Vernon against Lincoln. Vallandigham chose the town because of the regions’ lack of support for the liberation of southern slaves by the Lincolns. (Image submitted.)

Even those who supported the union during the war had limits on their support for Lincoln’s agenda, even after the president’s tragic assassination in April 1865. The black vote debate continued, prompting a very nasty letter a few months later.

The letter was dated July 15, 1865 and was postmarked from Greersville, Ohio. The town’s name was later shortened to Greer, and it can still be found straddling Ohio 514 on the Mohican River in Jefferson Township of Knox County.

The letter begins aggressively and only gets worse: Dear Sir: – We are not writing to you as party men, but as citizen-soldiers returned from the field to resume the duties of civilian life.

“We went to war to put down the rebellion and thus preserve the Union; but we don’t care about the n—– so neither do we now. If slavery fell, we didn’t care, and if not, we didn’t care, provided we saved the Union. We did not want to see the Union broken up, nor do we want to be placed on the same level as the Negroes, as a reward for our services.

“As you are a soldier, general, we have the right to rely on you to defend our rights, and if you support the boys, they will support you; but if you go about putting us on a par with the niggers, then well, it’s all against you.

Another signer of the letter was Henry Sapp. He is buried in Danville. (Image source: Find-A-Grave.com)

It’s an interesting position to take. I have no idea whether or not the writers of this letter were aware of the implied threat from a group of ex-soldiers publicly stating all well and good against you. But I suspect they were well aware of the veiled threat, given that they were all farmers with guns, and since they had been soldiers, they obviously knew how to use them.

The sentence is worded in such a way that the threat remains veiled, and therefore legally unassailable. It reminds me of the current controversy with Jason Aldean’s song, where the writer claims not to make violent threats, although the ingredients are all presented, leaving the observer to make the connection.

The letter goes on to say that the undersigned soldiers were against having black soldiers because we were able to whip the rebels ourselves, which is patently untrue. He then goes on to tell another blatant lie, which is that although the Negroes wore uniform, you know, General, the white soldiers fought.

Whatever the authors wanted to assert, it is well documented that there were many examples of courageous and impressive conduct on the battlefield by African American soldiers.

That’s about as much practical defense as the writers take from their outright racist stance. Soon, they clearly reveal their hatred: [N]we will never agree to go to the polls alongside n—–s. The authors then claim that General William Tecumseh Sherman has always been opposed to n—– troops, and now he is opposed to n—– voters.

While Sherman opposed the use of black troops in the war (for strategic reasons) and had expressed initial opposition to extending black suffrage, he later reconsidered his position after seeing the abuses of postwar Reconstruction in the South and declared his support for full black civil rights, including the right to vote.

Governor Cox: Knox County veterans opposed to extending the franchise to blacks appealed to General Jacob Cox, a Civil War general from Ohio who was running for governor of Ohio. (Image submitted.)

Did this letter influence General Cox’s public opinion? We can’t know for sure, but he eventually sided with his former soldiers in opposing black suffrage. He was elected governor of Ohio even before he was retired from the army, serving from 1866 to 1868.

He then served as Secretary of the Interior under President Ulysses S. Grant until Grant forced him out. Cox then served in Congress from 1877 to 1879. He later served as president of the University of Cincinnati. Unlike General Sherman, Cox’s views on black suffrage are not known to have ever evolved.

So who were the ex-soldiers that Cox ended up uniting with in racism? I list them here along with what little I have been able to discover about them:

1. William H. Drincan, who served in Company K of the 69th Ohio Volunteer Infantry. I couldn’t find out anything about him.

2. Ephraim Barker, who served in Company E of the 20th OVI. I found a reference to a minister by that name who lived in Licking County, but I don’t think it was him. I found only one reference to an Ephraim Barker living in Richland Township in Holmes County, east of Greer, in the 1880 Agricultural Census. This Barker shared a 120 acre farm (80 plowed acres / 40 wooded acres) and had two dairy cows, 10 pigs and 40 chickens.

3. David Blubaugh, who served in K Company, 63 rd OVI. He was born in 1833 and lived most of his life near Danville. He died at the age of 41, when he fell from a tree where he was trying to catch a raccoon.

4. Vincent Piar (also spelled in some documents as Pyar and Paiar), who served in the 2nd Ohio Cavalry. He was born in Switzerland or Germany in 1830. He came to the United States before the Civil War and lived in Fredericktown, where he worked as a farmhand. He married Rachel Blubaugh, a sister of the David Blubaugh mentioned above. Paiar is listed in the 1890 Veterans Census, but in the infantry. He died in 1905 of blood poisoning.

5. Robert Hyelt, who served in G Company of the 98th OVI. I couldn’t find out anything about him.

6. Henry Peighlor, who served in K Company, 43rd OVI. I couldn’t find out anything about him, although the surname sounds like an alternate spelling of Pealer, a household name in northwest Knox County. However, I couldn’t find anything by that name either.

7. William Sapp, who served in Company K of the 43rd OVI. William was born in 1839 and appears to have been Henry Sapp’s younger brother.

8. Henry Sapp, who served in Company I of the 33rd OVI. He was born in 1837 and died in 1921. He is buried in Brinkhaven. He served eight months, from September 1864 to June 1865.

9. Peter Neff, who served in Company E of the 20th OVI. He was born in 1838 or 1839. He was listed as a resident of Jefferson Township of Knox County in the 1863 draft. He later served a year and a half from January 1864 to July 1865. He did not remain in Knox County after the war, moving to Cameron, Missouri, where he died in 1921.

The Fifteenth Amendment to the US Constitution, guaranteeing black men the right to vote, was passed by Congress in 1869 and ratified by the states within a year. It is not known if any of the veterans who wrote this letter later changed their minds.

The world, however, has evolved and continues to challenge people to learn and grow. Reviewing the past is an important part of this process.

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