“I am glad to hear good news of the situation in Ohio,” Dibble wrote. “With us, having no Republican State or County Ticket in the field yet, we are not yet at boiling heat. Our County is organized into 35 white and colored Democratic Clubs, and we expect to carry it. E.W.M. Mackey, (the Republican State Chairman, & candidate for Congress from our Dist.) is trying to hold a few meetings in this Co.; but the negroes do not attend as in former campaigns, and the meetings are not enthusiastic. The colored people do not take kindly to Garfield: they wanted Grant.”

“Besides,” he continued, “the School Trustees and School Teachers among them are mostly Democrats: and the colored teachers realize the difference between being paid their salaries direct from the Treasury in full, and the Republican plan here of always crying ‘no funds,’ and compelling them to submit to a 50% discount at the hands of a middleman, who divided profits with the Treasurer. The remarkable prosperity of all classes, especially in the last two years, has shown them that they thrive better under Democratic rule than they ever did under Republican rule.”

“I trust Ohio and South Carolina,” the letter concludes, “so closely united in commercial interests, will vote alike in November, for the hero of Gettysburg, as the great Union Candidate of the American People.”