LOT Old Heritage Auctions  /  2007 Oct: The Luhrs Collection #9675  / 

61243

Confidential 1856 Political Strategy Letter

Currency:USD Category:Collectibles / Paper Start Price:75.00 USD Estimated At:150.00 - 200.00 USD
Confidential 1856 Political Strategy Letter
<B>Confidential 1856 Political Strategy Letter to Thomas Caute Reynolds.</B></I> Eight pages, 7.5” x 9.5”, St. Louis, June 13, 1856, from Isaac H. Sturgeon, to Thomas Caute Reynolds. This letter could stand alone as a microcosm of the issues surrounding the 1856 elections. There are references to “Know Nothings”, slavery, Thomas Hart Benton, anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic sentiment, etc. The letter is a point-by-point strategy for inundating the local St. Louis newspapers with a pro-slavery message. It panders to the working-class immigrants and preys on their fears of discrimination. The letter is quite long and detailed but a few choice passages will give a flavor of the whole.<BR>Sturgeon, like political consultants today, understands the short attention span of the electorate and writes: “<I>Let the articles be short making but a point or two in each article - Articles of this sort will be read much more if you can write a dozen short articles making only a point or two in each. It will be better than one long article which will be read by very few on account of its length…</B></I>”. He sets out the talking points: “<I>…convince adopted citizens that their interests require them to unite with us…that the Blair faction would sell them out…aiding the Blair faction is to give the state to the K. N.'s Know Nothings …Effect the titles of the Catholic Church to its property for colleges and church purposes…</B></I>”. Sturgeon advises: “<I>Tell them that it makes no more slaves whether Kansas comes in as a free or slave state & that it is not our business which she does…ask them if they are going to sacrifice themselves here for the sake of the negro when they can do him no good but sink themselves…Let them see that their sympathy for the human race will do no good for the party they are trying to sink…let them see too that Blair is using Col. Bentons coat tail to drag him into Congress for this district…Let it be understood that Buchanan heartily approves the platform & will carry it out…that platform says that the Kansas and Nebraska bill was right…Blair cannot honestly support Buchanan for he has declared against that bill & in favor of the restoration of the Mo compromise…</B></I>”. But Sturgeon craftily distances himself from the process writing: “<I>I shall make no speeches this canvass for the reason that I am part of a railroad & a govt office. It might injure the former & popular prejudice is against the latter.</B></I>”<BR>Isaac H. Sturgeon was a lawyer and St. Louis banker who became president of the North Missouri Railroad in 1855. Sturgeon was appointed assistant United States treasurer by President Buchanan. A Southern born man, Sturgeon was playing a double game. He was in the confidence of the Southern Rights men and was regarded by them as one of their number. At the same time he was working secretly under instructions of Frank Blair, the very man he mentions in the letter. Frank Blair, Jr. (1821-1875) was a close personal friend of Thomas Hart Benton and, like Benton, was anti-slavery.<BR>Thomas Caute Reynolds (1821-1887) was born in Charleston, South Carolina and moved to St. Louis, Missouri in 1850. Here he opened a law practice, served as United States Attorney, and rose in the Democratic Party, joining the anti-Benton wing when the party split over Senator Thomas Hart Benton's failure to support the Southern side of the national debate in the late 1840s and early 1850s. Early on in St. Louis he had good relations with the influential German community. Republicans, however, consciously and aggressively pursued a Free Soil policy that fed on white fears that slavery and the Democratic Party would force white labor to compete with slave labor. Reynolds, as a proslavery Democrat, lost the support of the German community. As can be seen by this letter the strategic editorial campaign in the local St. Louis papers was particularly aggressive and the Republican editor of the <I>Missouri Democrat,</B></I> Gratz Brown (Frank Blair's cousin) so angered Reynolds that he challenged Brown to a duel in March 1855. This duel never came off but the feud continued to fester until August 26, 1856, a scant two months after this letter was written, the duel occurred on Bloody Island (Mississippi River). Brown was shot in the leg (and was to walk with a limp for the rest of his life) while Reynolds was unscathed and both returned to the political fray. Reynolds was elected Lieutenant Governor of Missouri in 1860 but with the start of the Civil War he found himself in the flux of Missouri's free state, slave state battle. He became the second Confederate governor of Missouri. After the war he fled to Mexico and became an advisor to Emperor Maximilian but returned to the United States to resume his law practice and begin writing a book about his Civil War years. In 1887 he committed suicide by jumping down an elevator shaft.<BR>This historically important letter clearly illuminates Isaac Sturgeon's duplicitous political machinations. It has the usual creases and toning but is quite legible and in very good condition. <I>From the collection of Henry E. Luhrs.</B></I><BR><BR><b>Shipping:</b> Flat Material, Small (<a target="_blank" href="http://www.heritageauctions.com/common/shipping.php">view shipping information</a>)
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