Letters of Major Jack Downing, of the Downingville MilitiaSmith, Seba
History
Letters of Major Jack Downing, of the Downingville Militia
Smith, Seba
Lincoln, Abraham, 1809-1865 -- Caricatures and cartoons; United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865 -- Humor
There is one thing that makes me a little bashful about publishin a
book. My eddicashin was not very well taken keer of when I was a boy,
and the consequence is, I ain't quite so smart in grammer and spellin
as sum peepil. But one thing is certain, I allers make myself
understood, and that, after all, is the main thing. I want Bromley and
Kumpany to fix up the spellin a leetle, and then I think the book will
pass muster.
I don't ever expect to live to write anuther book; in fact, I don't
want to. I have labored as hard for the good of my kentry as any man in
it, and yet I've lived to see it all go to rack and ruin. I don't raly
know whether I shall write anuther letter, for a man of my years don't
feel like such work. But there is one thing I feel sure of. Though the
clouds look dark and black now, and though I don't expect to live to
see everything all rite again, yet the Dimmocracy will triumph in the
end. There is no blottin that out. It is in the natur of things. Peepel
are naterally Dimmocrats, so old Ginneral Jackson used to say, and it
takes a good deal of hard lying to make 'em enything else. Sometimes
the liars get the upper-hand for a time, jest as they have now, but it
can't last always.
I don't want you to put any preface to my book, for I have most always
found that prefaces are filled full of falsehoods. I jest want my book
to go on its merits, if it has eny. I've tried to tell the truth about
politics, as I understand it, and ef Linkin had only taken my advice,
the kentry would now be nigh about as good as new. But he wouldn't do
it, and so I've left him to get out of the scrape he is in the best way
he can. The Kernel, however, don't think any the less of me because
I've been plane with him. He thinks my idees of niggers are all rong,
and I think his are all rong, and there is jest where we split, for
turn this question upside down or inside out, and, after all, the
nigger is at the bottom of it. Jest as a man's idees run on niggers,
jest about in that style will be his views on the war. Take an
out-an-out Abolishinist, who thinks niggers are a little better than
white folks, and he is for subjugashin, confiskashin, and exterminashin
to the bitter end. Ef he thinks niggers are jest as good as white
folks, but no better, then he is a little milder on the South; and so
on down through every grade of a war man, the bitterness agin the South
runs jest about even with the ignorince about niggers. Finally, the man
who knows jest what niggers are fit for and what they need to make 'em
useful and happy, is the strongest opponent of the war. So you see this
proves that the nigger is at the bottom of the hull war.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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