The Booker T. Washington Papers, Vol.6, page 86, Apr. 1901, U. of Illinois Press

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The BOOKER T. WASHINGTON Papers aware that I am not in criminal or any other kind of practice, and have been in practical retirement ever since I have resided in Washington, for I told you so myself the last time we met. The statement is not only untrue but unkind to that unfortunate man, annoying to me, and unworthy of a man of your high standing in the country. I repeat, it utterly amazed me. Very respectfully, P. B. S. Pinchback ALS Con. zo7 BTW Papers DLC. iPinckney Benton Stewart Pinchback (~837-~9~), a prominent figure in Louisiana Reconstruction, was born in Macon, Gal, to Eliza Stewart and her white master, William P. Pinchback. The Mississippi planter freed Eliza and her children and sent them north to Cincinnati, where Pinchback attended school. His father's death and the subsequent victory of white relatives in the contest over the paternal estate cut short the boy's formal education. Beginning as a cabin boy on Ohio riverboats, Pinchback became a steward on the luxury steamers cruising the Mississippi. In 186z he ran the blockade at Yazoo City, reached New Orleans, and formed a Union Army company in the second regiment of Louisiana Native Guards. But in 1863 Pinchback resigned from the army to protest the unequal treatment of black soldiers. Active in Reconstruction politics from the beginning, Pinchback was the only black in New Orleans to head a Republican ward club; he also served on the party's state committee from 1867 on. As a member of the 1867-68 constitutional convention, he drafted the new document's civil rights article. Elected to the state senate in the fall of ITS, he became president pro tempore in 187~, and acting lieutenant governor when the incumbent died. Thus, during Henry Clay Warmoth's impeachment, Pinchback served as acting governor of Louisiana for forty-three days in 187~-73. He had meanwhile run for Congress in the fall of 18 and was declared the victor, but his Democratic opponent contested the election and ultimately won the seat. Pinchback's senatorial aspirations were similarly crushed. The Louisiana legislature elected him to the U.S. Senate in Jan. 1873; three years later, in a close vote, Congress decided against him. Pinchback also served as a New Orleans school director from 18 to 1877. The Redeemer governor in 1877 rewarded him for his accommodation to the new regime with a position on the state board of education. Pinchback represented Madison Parish in the 1879 state constitutional convention. The Weekly Louisianian, a black journal he had started in 1870, ceased publication in 188~. From 1882 to 1885, Pinchback was the surveyor of customs for the port of New Orleans. He then studied law for a year at Straight University (~887). Worried by the deteriorating racial atmosphere, Pinchback founded the American Citizens' Equal Rights Association early in 1890, but the organization never flourished. About 18 he moved north, first to New York City, where he worked briefly as a federal marshal, then to Washington, D.C., where he settled permanently. Pinchback practiced law for a time, then lived in semi-retirement in the national capital. A close friend of Whitefield McKinlay in Washington, Pinchback was an adviser to BTW on national capital affairs and made frequent visits to the White House and to congressional committees in BTW's behalf, particularly in patronage matters. 86