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AL signed only with initials. 4 pp. With original mailing envelope.

To a cousin, Charles B. Wheeler, Greene, New York. Written by a northern “carpet bagger” who had gone South during Reconstruction: “…We are all well satisfied with the climate…It is a very healthy place, there is no ague and fever…The Mountains abound in game such as Deer, bears, wolves, foxes, wild turkeys, pheasants and partridges. In the forests around us are squirrels, rabbits, foxes opossum, quails and wild ducks along the rivers. There are plenty of fish…Cat fish weighing from 25 to 100 lbs…. take your gun and fishing tackle and come down and spend the summer. We are about…17 miles west from Knoxville…There are quite a good many Northern families settling around here. The Rebels are all quiet, it is all fudge about their robbing and killing northern men. We never hear of such a thing unless we see it in some Northern papers…for the past 8 months I have been teaching the Darkies some of the time. I have had upwards of forty scholars…I was at Knoxville the 3rd and heard Andy’s [ex-President Andrew Johnson] speech. He used the pronoun “I” 195 times and the word Constitution and Constitutional 30 times. I am just as radical as ever…”  Ironically, the Ku Klux Klan, which would soon terrorize northern white teachers of freed slaves in the South, had been formed in Tennessee four years earlier.