Letter from Oliver Johnson, Orange, N.J., to William Lloyd Garrison, May 1, 1877

Oliver Johnson writes William Lloyd Garrison stating that he has never read Garrison's letter to Dr. Eliot, and therefore cannot "decide how far the Doctor's views agree" with his own. Johnson states that he and Garrison's own personal disagreement concerning Grant's "Southern policy" dates from over four years ago, and notes that he did not vote for Grant in 1872 owing to his disagreement with Grant's policy of Reconstruction, and his belief that Grant was "the tool of unscrupulous men". Johnson states that Grant's Reconstruction policies had "utterly failed", and that their continuation by Hayes would only worsen the matter. While noting that any policy vis-à-vis the South is "but a choice of evils", Johnson expresses his concurrence with Sumner's proposal to have re-admitted the Confederate states as territories prior to granting them full statehood, stating that the Constitution itself now stymies efforts to grant "substantial protection to the negro" owing to the rights possessed by the States.
Courtesy of Boston Public Library