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Autograph Letter Signed. Nashville, Tenn., July 31, 1884. 3pp.+ docketing note. To Hon. John Logan, Washington, D.C., the  Republican Vice-Presidential  nominee, who has signed the docketing note on verso.

Hadley suggests that an eloquent Black politician from Nashville be sent to Logan’s native state of Illinois to harangue Black voters who had moved there from Tennessee. 

“…one speech from an intelligent Colored Man to a crowd of Colored People has more effect than a dozen White speakers would have to a Colored audience. We do not want to lose a vote…”

Hadley was an ex-slave, a saloon owner who became one of the largest real estate brokers in Nashville. An elected city magistrate, with close ties to Frederick Douglass, he was one of the few Black political leaders in post-war Tennessee who had not been born free.