General Swayne of the Union Army arrived in Montgomery July, 1865, as an assistant commissioner of the Freedmen’s bureau. He was later appointed military Governor of Alabama during the early days of Reconstruction, serving from 1867 to 1868. During his stay, he lived at the home of Martha Dandridge Bibb and her family on Moulton Street. Swayne played a major role in establishing schools for African Americans, including high schools in Selma, Montgomery, and Mobile. He also helped organize Talladega College. He apparently revisited Montgomery thirty years after his initial stay and wrote a letter of appreciation to his hosts.
From his letter:
Swayne & Swayne
Attorneys at Law
August, 1890
120 Broadway, New York
"My dear Mrs. Bibb:
Immediately after my return from Montgomery I wanted to write and thank you for the pleasure I found in again meeting you and your sister, but found, to my surprise and regret, that you had always been so familiarly known to me as Mrs. “Dyke” Bibb, that during an interval of thirty years your proper name and faded out of mind...
I enclose herewith a photograph which you may recognize. Since the original had the pleasure of meeting you, it has occurred, as then anticipated, that McKinley has been nominated upon a gold standard basis, and I have often reflected with amused interest upon the cordiality with which you were anticipating that result. I have also been following with interest the sound money movement in Alabama, and hope it may yet be that I shall rejoice with you, not only over the election of McKinley but over Alabama’s coming into line as a good Republican State. If that occurs, the conversations we had thirty years ago will enable you to appreciate how I shall be disposed, in view of that result, if not to “depart in peace”, at least to invite you to rejoice over it with me."
An excerpt from Martha Dandridge's response:
"Your photograph is an excellent likeness and bears the impress of a happy and successful life. It has given me great pleasure, and brings back through the lapse of years the memory of so many gentle courtesies extended my dear mother and father that while I look upon it my heart is filled with grateful sorrow mingled with pleasant thoughts of your delicate efforts to cheer them in those dark days of adversity and gloomy apprehensions, indicating so fully that you were to the manner born. You may remember that I sometimes reminded you jokingly that your virtues were inherited from your good southern blood. You little knew that laughter often comes to hold in check the flow of tears. How like a dream it all seems now!..."
And later in the letter, she responds to his specific reference to McKinley and the South possibly changing its political bent:
"Surely the (passing) of time brings many changes, and I am not surprised by your amusement of my willingness to accept McKinley on the gold standard basis, instead of any representative of the face silver craze, but I beg to explain that it was only a choice of evils. I assure you I am still a democrat. The South cannot afford to be anything else until the Negro problem is solved. I hope it will be many years before you “depart in peace” or will be enabled to invite me to “rejoice with you in Alabama’s coming into line as a good Republican State”. It was indeed a pleasure to meet you again and to note how lightly time had touched you since your sojourn in the South."
For sure, the passing of time does bring many changes, but these exchanges tell volumes about the climate of those years and maybe even, foreshadowed the future. There's much between the lines.
On other battles tomorrow.
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