DAVIS, Jefferson.

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Autograph letter signed, to a former Confederate soldier, re-affirming his devotion to white supremacy in Mississippi. The former Confederate president reveals his unchanged beliefs and continued involvement with white supremacist movements in his home state of Mississippi, expressing both his disgust with Reconstruction and his approval of the racial violence and voter intimidation in the 1875 election.Davis responds to a letter from the Confederate veteran S. D. Hewes. Hewes forwarded a newspaper clipping, still present, alleging Davis's support for Adelbert Ames, Mississippi's Radical Republican governor and a former Union general. The clipping reports "it is consoling to be informed that Mr. Jefferson Davis, in his late visit to Mississippi, expressed himself as very conservative, and that he believes Governor Ames to be honest, and lays every mistake made by him to his unfortunate surroundings".Hewes wrote to Davis asking whether the report was true. Davis responds with an emphatic rejection, writing that "the confidence you felt in my devotion to Mississippi, and my abhorrence of the vampyres who have sucked her life blood, and slandered her people, was not misplaced; and I thank you for it". He continues, "The slip you enclosed, and which is returned in this, is wholly unwarranted by any thing said by me. If I have not assumed to judge Gov. Ames, it was not that I hold his advisers responsible, nor could I ever have designated his misdeeds by so mild a word as 'mistake

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