Born in Virginia, John H. Stringfellow studied medicine in Philadelphia before moving to Missouri. In 1854 he helped found the town of Atchison, Kansas, and became a leader of the proslavery settlers in the territory. The speaker of the first territorial house of representatives, Stringfellow coedited the Squatter Sovereign, a weekly newspaper that urged its readers to “scourge the country of abolitionism, free soilism, and every other damnable ism that exists.” Discouraged by the prospects of making Kansas a slave state, he returned to Virginia in 1858 and during the war served as a surgeon in Confederate army hospitals. Stringfellow wrote to Davis from his home outside Richmond as the Confederate Congress debated whether to arm slaves. On February 20 the Confederate house of representatives would approve, 40–37, a bill that authorized the Confederate army to enlist slaves with the permission of their masters, but without providing for their emancipation. The bill would pass the Confederate senate 9–8 on March 8 and was signed by Davis five days later. General Orders No. 14, issued by the Confederate adjutant general on March 23, would require that masters free their slaves before enlistment. The Confederate army would recruit only a few hundred black soldiers before the end of the war.
Glenn Allen Henrico Feby 8th 1865
My dear Sir Impelled by the perils of our country, and the thousand conflicting theories as to the cause, and cure; to continually have these things before me; I have been amazed to see, that no one thus far has concieved, or if concieved, had the boldness to present in my judgment, the only solution of all these perils and difficulties. I address you because you have already taken a long stride in the right direction & because I believe your mind has already reached the true solution, but owing to peculiar circumstances has hesitated to enunciate it. The history of this war demonstrates the wonderfull fact, that the Confederate states mainly subsists both of the immense armies engaged in the conflict, and actually after furnishing all the soldiers to our army, contributes about one half of those making the army of its enemies, and should the war continue for annother year, the south will probably furnish two thirds of the army of her foes. These facts which cannot be controverted show certainly any thing but weakness, or inferiority on the part of the south; but it does show that a change of policy in relation to the conduct of the war, and that a radical one must be adopted, or we shall be destroyed. Let us look at a few facts. The Yankees have now in their service 200 000 of our exslaves, and under their next draft, will probably have half as many more. We have not one soldier from that source in our ranks. It is held by us that slaves will not make soldiers, therefore we refuse to put them in the service & I think are correct in so doing. But while we thus think, and thus act, our enemies are creating, in addition to their white force which we have found to our cost in the last year, to be quite as large as we could manage, an auxiliary army of our own escaped slaves, of three or four hundred thousand men. Now however we may decry the negro as a soldier every one knows that if the white troops of the yankees are numerous enough to hold all ours in check, then this negro army can, at will, ravage and destroy our whole country, and we will be absolutely conquered by our own slaves. We allege that slaves will not fight in our armies, escaped slaves fight & fight bravely for our enemies, therefore a freed Slave will fight. If at the begining of this war, all our negroes had been free, does any one believe the Yankees would have been able to recruit an army amongst them, does any one know of a solitary free negro escaping to them and joining their army. If our slaves were now to be freed would the Yankees be able to raise another recruit amongst them? If freedom and amnesty were declared in favour of those already in the Yankee lines, would they not almost to a man desert to their old homes? Would not our freed negroes make us as good soldiers as they make for our enemies? Again suppose we free a portion of our slaves & put them in the army, we leave all the rest as a recruiting field for the enemy, from which we cannot get a single soldier and thus we see one half of our entire population of no avail to us, but on the contrary ready at every oportunity to join the ranks of our enemies. Now sir Southern soldiers are the best that ever drew a blade in the cause of liberty, but there are some things which they cannot do; they cannot fight our battles against overwhelming numbers, and raise the necessary supplies for the army and the women and children at home, and yet sir this is what they will be called upon to do if this war is protracted for two years longer. I ask sir then in view of these facts if the prompt abolition of slavery, will not prove a remedy sufficient to arrest this tide of disaster? The Yankee army will be diminished by it, our own army can be increased by it & our labour retained by it. Without it, if the war continues, we shall in the end be subjugated, our negroes emancipated, our lands parcelled out amongst them, and if any of it be left to us, only an equal portion with our own negroes, and ourselves given only equal (if any) social and political rights and privileges. If we emancipate, our independence is secured, the white man only will have any, and all political rights, retain all his real and personal property, exclusive of his property in his slave, make the laws to controll the freed negro, who having no land, must labor for the land owner; and being an adequate supply of labor, must work for the land owner on terms about as economical as tho owned by him.
We cannot consent to reconstruction even if they repeal all their laws, and withdraw all their proclamations in regard to us, our Lands & our Negroes, because they now have, or at any session of their congress can make the necessary number of states, to alter the Constitution, in a constitutional manner, and thus abolish slavery, and interfere in any other way they think proper. But even if the present administration should pledge any thing we may ask, it binds no one but themselves, during their own term of service, which you of course understand better than I do and suppose they should even promise and stand by their promise to pay us for our negroes, lost or to be emancipated, how will they pay us. They cannot by direct taxation, but only in levying an export duty on our products, Cotton, Tobacco & Naval stores: and this war has shown them & the world, if not us, how much they will bear, Cotton commanding one dollar pr pound, Tobacco three dollars, Tar two hundred dollars pr Barrel &c &c. To pay their war debt & for our negroes would make a debt of six (thousand) millions or probably eight the interest of which at five pr ct, would take four hundred millions of revenue to pay, and to raise something additional to extinguish the principal, would require an additional hundred million, thus you see an export duty to this extent would be levied & could easily be raised upon our own products; twenty cents upon cotton which would make the price about 32 or 33 cts, the world would pay, because they must have it & have bought it for much more, would bring an annual income of about four hundred million without countg the duty on Tobacco & Naval Stores but even with this most favorable view of the case we should loose the whole of our own war debt which is or will be say two thousand million of course this would be repudiated & justly by our enemies if we consent to reconstruction Whereas if we emancipate we save the two thousand million, & we can pay for the negroes four thousand million more, and the export duty on cotton alone (which we should have levied if we go back into the Union) will pay the interest upon this at 5 pr ct and leave a hundred million as a sinking fund to extinguish the principal in some 30 or 40 years & the slave owner have all his labour on his farm that he had before; (for having no home & no property to buy one with, he must live with & work for his old owner for such wages as said owner may choose to give, to be regulated by law hereafter as may suit the change of relation) And this six thousand million is not a debt we tax ourselves to pay, but the world pays it. The speculator who buys the cotton & pays the duty, makes the manufacturer pay him his ten or fifteen pr ct nett profit on his gross outlay, the manufacturer makes the merchant pay him his ten or fifteen pr ct on his gross outlay, the merchant charges the retail dealer his ten or fifteen pr ct on his gross outlay, and so on till the shirt is made and he who wears it out pays the duty & all the diferent pr centages upon it. Thus we will pay to the extent of our consumption of the exported article when manufactured & returned to us, a mere nothing when compared to the immense gratuity, six thousand million which the World makes to us, & which they so justly should be made to hand over to us, for the cold blooded, heartless indifferance with which thay have contemplated the bloody, inhuman, barbarous, and apparently hopeless contest in which we have been engaged, and which they at any moment could have arrested by a word.
By emancipation I think we would not only render our triumph secure as I have attempted to prove, in & of itself but in all future time the negro in place of being useless in time of war as a soldier, & really dangerous as we have seen to our cost, continues to be an element of strength. And I think we may reasonably hope that the nations of the earth would no longer be unwilling to recognise us, for surely no people ever before strugled so long, and under so many dificulties, and endured so many privations so uncomplainingly as we have without finding some friendly hand outstretched to encourage or to help; and there can be no other reason than that we are exclusively & peculiarly a nation of slaveholders. I think that even amongst our enemies numbers would be added to those who are already willing to let us go in peace, for we should thus give the lie at once & forever to the charge that we are waging a war only for negro slavery, and the heart of ever honest lover of human liberty throughout the world would sumpathise with the men who for their cherished rights as freemen, would wage such an unequal contest as we have waged & besides sacrefising all their earnest convictions as to the humanity & righteousness of slavery were willing to sacrefice their property interest of four thousand millions to secure their independence, which might all be saved so far as the promises of our enemies are concerned, by reconstruction. In my judgement, the only question for us to decide, is whether we shall gain our independence by freeing the negro, we retaining all the power to regulate them by law when so freed, or permit our enemies through our own slaves to compell us to submit to Emancipation with equal or superior political rights for our negroes and partial or complete confiscation of our property for the use & benefit of the negro And sir if the war continues as it is now waged, and we are forced, by the overwhelming odds of the Yankees and our own slaves in arms against us, into submission it would be but an act of simple justice for the Yankee Govt to see to it that their negro allies are at least as well provided for in the way of homes, as those who have been arrayed in arms against them.
I have always believed & still believe that slavery is an institution sanctioned if not established by the Almighty and the most humane & beneficial relation that can exist between Labor & Capital, still I think that this contest has proven that in a military sense it is an element of weakness & the teachings of providence as exhibited in this war dictates conclusively & imperitively that to secure & perpetuate our independence we must emancipate the negro.
P.S. We should then get rid of the only impediment in the way of an exchange of prisoners thus getting 3o or 4o thousand more men in the field
I have given you what I conceive to be the only solution to our dificulties. How to effect this is a serious difficulty. Men are reluctant, in fact it might be imprudent, to discuss this thing publickly; but we know that in great crises men think & act rapidly, or at least should do so. If congress could be convinced of the correctness of this course they could in Convention with the Governors of the States devise some method, by which conventions of the states could be held and the necessary measures adopted; first by law of Congress if necessary provide for paying the owners for them I have not found a single slave holder with whom I have conversed but is willing to submit to the measure if deemed necessary by the proper Authorities Indeed I have no doubt of the power of Congress as a military necessity, to impress all of the able bodied male negroes & pay for them giving them their freedom & providing for paying for the rest upon the condition of manumission, but the other course would be least objectionable We burn an individuals cotton, corn or meat to keep it from the enemy so we can take his negro man & set him free to keep him from recruiting the enemys army.
I have written you this much, hoping it may aid you in some way. I have shown what I have written to no one, nor communicated my intentions to any one. If you think what I have written worth anything, make what use of it you chose, if not just stick it between the bars of your grate. What I have written is with an honest endeavour to aid you in guiding our ship through the perils & darkness which surround her & from no feeling of dissatisfaction or distrust as to yourself, for you have all my sympathies & all of my trust & confidence With diffidence & the warmest admiration & Respect I remain Your friend
J H Stringfellow
Written very hurriedly & with no effort at arrangement but only as “food for thought” JHS
I opened the envelope to say that my communication was written before I heard of the return of our commissioners, & that I am more than sustained by their report, and the action of the Yankee Congress on the slavery question, & now we have only to decide on or between Emancipation for our independence, or Subjugation & Emancipation coupled with negro equality or superiority, as our enemies may elect JHS