26 June 1869 • Elmira, N.Y. (MS: DLC, UCCL 00323)
bituminous coal office no. 6 baldwin street
I got your note of 24th, just before leaving New York, & was glad to see the Appeal acknowledge your several propositions in such a docile & un-bloodthirsty Ⓐemendation manner. A dozen lines in the Tribune seem to move their bowels more than all the supplications of the sorrowful pavement-contractors. We thank you again. The correction under the “General Notice” head, which you mention, has been crowded out by press of matter, no doubt, as Mr. Langdon & I are unable to find it in the Tribune or of Ⓐemendation yesterday or the day before. But we are still on the lookout for it.1explanatory note Mr. Langdon’s patience, even with Memphis Aldermen, was hard to wear out, but it is worn out at last, & he has instructed Brown & Co. to “go for them” in the U.S. courts, without further temporizing. He is the easiest & most generous-hearted creditor, with all sorts of people, I ever saw, but I guess he is pretty hard to manage when he gets mad once.
I hope your little family are well, & enjoying themselves, up there among the pleasant nutmeggers.2explanatory note
Reid’s note is not known to survive. The Memphis Appeal had responded to the New York Tribune of 15 June (see 15 June 69 to Reid, n. 2click to open link) with assurances that northern capitalists were, in fact, favorably regarded by the South:
The contractors are not ill-esteemed; on the contrary, they are favorably regarded by press and people. The refusal of the City Council to consent to a reconsideration of the contract with Brown & Co., and to make new terms at their request, does not argue that they are ill-esteemed. . . . We do appeal to Northern capitalists to make investments in the South, . . . and what is more, we have the best reason to believe that our appeals will not be in vain, notwithstanding the evident effort . . . to make it appear that Memphis and its people are characterised by unfairness and dishonesty. Will the Tribune be good enough to make a correction in accordance with the facts? (“We copy the following . . . ,” 20 June 69, 2)
The “correction” promised by Reid, and awaited by Clemens and Langdon, finally appeared in the Tribune on 28 June (5):
The Memphis Appeal assents to everything The Tribune has had to say concerning the Nicolson Pavement, and their difficulties with the Northern contractors, and their anxiety to get other Northern capitalists to make investments at the South. But it asks us to deny that they have any ill opinion of the contractors. We hasten to make the correction.
Nicolson pavement, patented by Samuel Nicolson (1791–1868) in 1854 and popular in American cities of the 1860s, was made up of a bed of sand upon which were laid one-inch-thick boards, a coat of asphalt, wooden blocks fixed in place with board strips and coal and pebbles, hot tar to fill all chinks, and a final covering of coarse sand or pebbles (Lester; Leggett, 2:1022).
Reid, who was unmarried and without a “little family,” was presumably vacationing in Connecticut, “the nutmeg state.”
MS, Papers of the Reid Family, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (DLC).
L3 , 278–279.
donated to DLC between 1953 and 1973 by Mrs. Helen Rogers Reid and her sons, Whitelaw Reid and Ogden R. Reid.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.