Autograph Letter Signed. Caroline, New York, Oct. 26, 1856. 4pp. to Isaac B. Noxon, Cortland, New York.. With original stamped envelope.
“… two mass meetings this faul, one was at Ithaca and the other at Speedsville. Mr Beecher was the speaker at Ithaca...at Speedsville...the sight that we saw, 31 ladies all dressed in uniform and a Jent by their side, and poor mourning Cansus riding upon a pale horse. They all rode upon horses around through the City two by two and bleeding Cansus followed alone. They have got a meeting appointed nearly every evening before election, but I am afraid that all of this will not elect J.C. Fremont…”
“Bleeding Kansas”, where violence broke out between pro- and anti-slavery diehards during the 1855 territorial election – famed New England Rev. Henry Ward Beecher sending 1200 rifle-toting Yankees west to prevent voting fraud – became a burning issue in the presidential election the following year, when explorer John C. Fremont was the nominee of the new anti-slavery Republican Party. Fremont lost the election but paved the way for the Lincoln victory of 1860.
This letter from the 1856 campaign, with all its misspellings, is remarkable for the vivid image of the mounted, “uniformed” women – who could not, of course, vote in the election – leading the “Cansus” pale horse through the small hamlet near Ithaca in south central New York state.