Jefferson Davis’s Coachman Lectures

A note from Wm. H. Johnson, New Bedford, tells of a speech by William A. Jackson, former coachman of  Jefferson Davis, now free. “He says the slaves down South had been waiting for the Proclamation of Emancipation long before he left the South, and when that was issued, the slaves were ready to a man to put their shoulders to the great Union wheel of this nation, which would result in the utter destruction of the rebellion before the new year should dawn upon the heads of this guilty people.”   (Liberator, October 10,  1862)