Extract of Thomas Jackson’s Letter
We consider this quite easy to interpret. First he always wrote clearly on good quality paper and he (mercifully) never used the confusing cross hatched style of writing you will see in Sample 3.
However he did use some unfamiliar ways of writing that were considered proper at the time.
After you have done your best to transcribe this extract, you can compare your version with ours.
I have seen labourers at work in Europe for ten pence a day & living on potatoes & buttermilk, & poorly clad in the coarsest of garments & miserably oppressed every way. Yet, when those same men manage to get to America, & find a class lower still & more degraded than they ever were, they, in 99 cases out of a hundred, join the ultra proslavery party and are as ready to ride rough shod over the poor negro as any body, although they may never be worth half enough to buy a black womans baby. Such is poor human nature.
The history of the white man in America, is one long tale of terrible outrage & murderous cruelty and oppression of other races of men. While constantly prating about his own patriotism, his great love of freedom & the his vast appreciation of his own rights he has been, in the mass, the bloodiest and most unprincebled despot, known in history.
Ambassador Notes
This is from Thomas Jackson himself (who mercifully never used the cross-hatched style of writing, seen in sample 3.) He also wrote clearly on good quality paper but used some old fashioned ways of writing. Thus, third line down, you see how double S (oppressed) was typically written by hand in those days. Once you get used to it, you see is again “in the mass”, second line from the bottom.
In this insight into TJ’s mind, you see two powerful principles that he fervently held.
First he is struck by an unsavory fact of human nature that has been operating for many generations. Groups tend to look down on any other group lower than they are on the social ladder
Then having considered the treatment of American Indians along with African Americans, he summarizes his view of his own white race.
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