(RECONSTRUCTION) A North Carolina official conspires to infl

Sale 2663 - Lot 370

Price Realized: $ 688

?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price

Estimate: $ 1,000 - $ 1,500

(RECONSTRUCTION.) A North Carolina official conspires to influence a local election, adding that "every Negro will pay his poll." Autograph Letter Signed from Edward P. Powers to an unnamed colonel [Charles Wetmore Broadfoot]. One page, 10 x 8 inches, plus integral blank leaf; mailing folds, minimal wear. Fayetteville, NC, 5 December 1871

Set Alert for Similar Items

Additional Details

A North Carolina election official wrote to his state legislator as local elections approached, pleading for a postponement: "I have made a careful and private canvass of this town and I assure you that we must by all means put off the town election until May. . . . We are not fully recovered from our August defeat. We can be prepared by May, but for God's sake have no election in the hollidays. We have everything to risk in Jan'y and by waiting until May we risk nothing, but will be sure to gain. Do all you can. . . . Every Negro will pay his poll." He evidently hoped that the poll tax would prevent Black voters from supporting the Republican Party.

The letter's author, Edward Polk Powers (1843-1900), was a Confederate war veteran, and served as an election official in Fayetteville. He made his biggest mark on history by testifying at great length as a witness in an 1867 lynching trial. Ten days after this letter was written, Fayetteville's Democratic representative in the state legislature, Colonel Charles Wetmore Broadfoot, introduced a bill to move the city's elections from January to May (Wilmington Daily Journal, 17 December 1871).