Connell, John M.:

LETTER FROM COLONEL CONNELL TO SENATOR THURMAN. THE PARTY IN A FALSE POSITION, AND CONNELL REFUSES TO SPEAK. LANCASTER, OHIO, AUGUST 2D, 1871. HON. A.G. THURMAN, CHAIRMAN DEMOCRATIC STATE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE:...

Lancaster, OH: 1871. Folio printed broadside, 8-1/4" x 16-3/4". Old folds, some wrinkles, light dustsoiling and wear. A few very short closed tears at edges, minor spotting. Good+.

Connell fought for the Union in the Civil War. Afterward he became a prominent Ohio Democrat, a State Senator, and losing candidate for State Attorney General in 1869. By 1871 he was disgusted with his Party which, he claims, is no longer the defender "of the rights of the citizen, and of the separate States, and of the only true Union, as the fathers made it under their old Constitution." He opposed the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, enacted to secure equal civil and political rights to the freedmen.
The 1871 Democratic State Convention, to Connell's horror, pledged to support "the full, faithful and absolute execution and enforcement of the constitution, as it now is, so as to secure equal rights to all persons under it, without distinction of race, color or condition." In fact, he says, enactment of the Reconstruction Amendments was secured "by fraud and violence." They "are revolutionary and void." Connell's broadside lament is rare: we locate a copy only at the Library of Congress.
OCLC 1261770255 [Library of Congress] as of February 2024. Not located at online sites of AAS, Ohio Univ., Ohio State Univ., Ohio Hist. Soc., NYPL, Harvard, Yale, Boston Athenaeum, Huntington Library, Newberry. Item #35969

Price: $1,250.00