The following text is a letter from John Singleton Mosby — the famed irregular colonel of Mosby’s Rangers — to Sam Chapman, decrying the “Lost Cause” narrative that had been building up during the turn of the 19th century.
Mosby decries this new narrative, asserts that the cause of the Southern Confederacy was indeed to preserve slavery, and cautions against conflating a defense of the South as a defense of the political reasons for the War itself — on which Mosby is emotionally emphatic and crystal clear.
John S. Mosby to Samuel Chapman
Washington, D.C.,
June 4, 1907.
Dear Sam:
I suppose you are now back in Staunton. I wrote you about my disgust at reading the reunion speeches: It has since been increased by reading Christian’s report. I am certainly glad I wasn’t there.
According to Christian the Virginia people were the abolitionists & the Northern people were pro-slavery. He says slavery was “a patriarchal” institution – so were polygamy & circumcision. Ask Hugh if he has been circumcised.
Christian quotes what the Old Virginians said against slavery. True; but why didn’t he quote what the modern Virginians said in favor of it – Mason, Hunter, Wise etc. Why did he state that a Virginia Senator (Mason) was the author of the Fugitive Slave law – and why didn’t he quote The Virginia Code (1860) that made it a crime to speak against slavery, or to teach a negro to read the Lord’s Prayer?
Now while I think as badly of slavery as Horace Greeley did I am not ashamed that my family were slaveholders. It was our inheritance. Neither am I ashamed that my ancestors were pirates and cattle thieves.
People must be judged by the standard of their own age. If it was right to own slaves as property it was right to fight for it. The South went to war on account of slavery. South Carolina went to war – as she said in her Secession proclamation – because slavery would not be secure under Lincoln. South Carolina ought to know what was the cause for her seceding. The truth is the modern Virginians departed from the teachings of their fathers.
John C. Calhoun’s last speech had a bitter attack on Mr. Jefferson for his amendment to the Ordinance of 1787 prohibiting slavery in the Northwest Territory. Calhoun was in a dying condition – was too weak to read it – so James M. Mason, a Virginia Senator, read it in the Senate about two weeks before Calhoun’s death – March 1850.
Mason and Hunter not only voted against the admission of California (1850) as a free state but offered a protest against when the Senate refused to record on its Journal, nor in the Convention when General Taylor had called to form a Constitution for California, there were 52 Northern & 50 Southern men – but it was unanimous against slavery —
But the Virginia Senator, with Ron Tucker and company were opposed to giving local self-government to California.
Ask Sam Yost to give Christian a skinning. I am not ashamed of having fought on the side of slavery – a soldier fights for his country – right or wrong – yet he is not responsible for the political merits of the course he fights in.
The South was my country.
Yours Truly,
John S. Mosby
PS: In February 1860 Jeff Davis offered a bill in the Senate which passed, making all the territories slave territory. He was opposed to letting the people decide whether or not they did have slavery – William A. Smith, President of Randolph Macon quit his duties as a teacher & in 1857-8-9-60 traveled all over Virginia preaching slavery and proving it was right by the Bible.
Envelope: Senator Jas. M. Mason was the author of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850; but the Ordinance 1787 for the government of the Northwestern Territory, contained in its amended form, as passed, the fugitive slave provision.