Regarding Grant,Greeley, and Sumner
Aug. 3, 1872
Writing to Charles Sumner: “Though I should be strongly induced, by the friendship subsisting between us, to avoid taking a position antagonistical to your own, under ordinary circumstances, even if I deemed it erroneous, yet all personal considerations, must be subordinated to the public welfare when seriously imperiled. … you have spoken plainly … in utter condemnation of the President of the United States; and your advice to the whole body of colored voters is, that they concentrate their suffrages upon a rival candidate in the person of Horace Greeley … I propose to speak with equal plainness, and as earnestly, to counsel my colored countrymen not to follow your lead in this matter, but, as voters, to move unitedly for the re-election of President Grant …” 1