Erastus Wright to Benjamin Franklin Butler

Letter from Erastus Wright to Benjamin Franklin Butler, September 4, 1864

Letter from Erastus Wright to Benjamin Franklin Butler, September 4, 1864
Springfield, Illinois, Sept. 4th, 1864

Dear Sir: Allow me to suggest a thought touching this long, protracted, and bloody war. The great wickedness of this nation has been, and is today Slavery. The plague is in the hearts of the people. The leprosy is there. The curse is not removed. The nation has got to put away the Achans. The 7th chapter of Joshua might be read as easy as to make 50 Parrott guns, and if heeded, would be ten times more efficient. If one Achan put a "spell" on the whole Army of Israel, God's chosen people, and with Joshua, a Godly man, as commander, what might we expect from a score of Achans not alone in the army but some in the Cabinet. I had a talk recently with my old neighbor Father Abraham. I stand by him yet, although many of his best friends have their feelings alienated and wounded by his sympathy with slavery, as though there was any goodness in so Godless a wretch as a slaveholder. The curse has to be put away; and, dear Genl., I say again, put away the accursed thing or we ought to bleed. Yea! the Nation ought to be destroyed. We have joined issue with God, our Maker. The colored man is a human being, and is as precious in the sight of God
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as you and I, has a right to his wife and children as much as Mr. Lincoln, or his Godless master that has robbed him not only of wages his whole life, but the children and wife that God gave him. Dear General, if "God is no respector of persons," what penalty would be justly due the nation or the inhuman monster that would do to your family or Gen. Grant's as we have to the friendless, crushed slave? The crime of the horse thief, the highway robber, is nothing to the crime of robbing you of an immortal soul that God gave you, no comparison.

We are bleeding as we richly deserve until we put away the Hellish thing and every sympathiser. There is no property in man.

Talk of compensating so Godless a wretch as a slave monger! It is an abomination. Since the move in Congress to that end, I laid the case before my God, and ardently desired its frustration. I wrote to many members who I am persuaded understand more of Law than Gospel, that the Divine Mind is clearly expressed in a case in point in Exodus 12th, 34 to 37. Where God directed the Children of Israel (slaves) to borrow of the Egyptians (masters) their jewels of silver and jewels of gold and raiment, which they did, and Spoiled the Egyptians (masters) as all the slaveholders in America ought to be spoiled, for God knew they ought not and never would return them. This is God's rule, and this is Justice. Away with Compensation; away with the thought of property in man. Cast overboard every slaveholder or sympathiser with the Hellish System, whether in the cabinet or in Command in the army. The nation would be a hundred per cent stronger without them than with them. Halleck, Blair, Scofield, and I could name several in the cabinet. I solemnly believe it would be a God-send if they could be removed.

I have, a number of times, heard it urged against volunteering. They object because of sympathisers with a system that God will curse, being kept in command.

Every reading man knows it is a Damning Sin -- hence it is repulsive to his feelings and against enlistment.

The change of commanders, McClellan or Fremont for Lincoln, will not alter the result: the Stain is in the heart of the Nation, and has got to be burnt out, until we shall not only be willing to "let the oppressed go free," but to define and plead their cause, not treat them with contempt like this skin-deep Christianity for the last 30 years; neither treat
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them as cotton bales as Gillmore is reported to have done at Fort Sumpter and brought disaster. Did not God see half that Regt. slaughtered, raw troops put in front? Sumpter is not taken yet. And let me say, dear General, as I keep the record a little, in every instance for the last 3½ years of this Day of Penalty, where kindness and mercy have been shown toward the Slaves, God's favor has been manifested, and in every instance of inhumanity His wrath. Is one of those slaves to blame for this Judgment of the Almighty: if not, let him be released and defended.

In the last 30 years, many in agony and torment have said in the words of the Prophet, "The Lord look upon it, and require it." The magnitude of the crime is indicated by the Penalty.

If our penalty is not enough, let us hold on to the accursed thing a while longer. General, in yours to me in 1861, dated at Old Point Comfort, many were the high commendations of those who perused it. Can I ask the favor of a short answer. Also that this letter may pass under the eye of Lt. Gen. Grant, whose interesting good Lady and family I had the pleasure of travelling with up from Cairo just after the battle of Fort Donaldson.

Yours truly, Erastus Wright

This letter, you say, too long for a Major General in command. I say, too much blood for slavery, slavery, slavery. Pleading for God's poor as he requires is honoring God, and God says, "them that honor me, I will honor." Hence the success of our noble General Butler.

I profess to be a Bible man, and am satisfied, if slavery is not entirely put away, this nation will be destroyed. It is a damning sin as high as Heaven and deep as Hell. If God has heard the cry of the poor and come for deliverance, who shall hinder. Remember old Pharaoh, whose track we are following, was Pharaoh, and all his host turned into Hell, not a man escaped. If his slavery (for he never took wife or child), mild as it was, received the penalty of death, what misery and torment has this whole Nation merited for that same sin in superlative degree? All written "For our instruction." E. W.