Former Mississippi Governor Reports On Earlier Political Run For State Senate Seat
PROTECTED CONTENT
If you’re a current subscriber, log in below. If you would like to subscribe, please click the subscribe tab above.
Username and Password Help
Please enter your email and we will send you a password reset link.
Hill Country Living
By Coulter Fussell
It’s a political-history Wagner Week: Jessie Wagner receives a letter from Earl Brewer who would later become Governor. He was 26 when he wrote this letter informing her about his intention to run for State Senate. Spoiler alert: he wins. Googling the political characters mentioned in this letter is interesting. I tried my best to find information on the Lafayette County murder case mentioned in the last paragraph but came up empty-handed, for the time being.
January 26, 1895
Dear Miss Jessie,
Your long looked for a letter came to hand a few days sense and would have been answered sooner, but for the fact that I have been absent from the city for some time. Of course, I’m always your friend and I’m always willing to make concessions to my friends, even to the taking of rosebuds off my hat if their circumstances are such as to demand that. But I can’t see the exterminating circumstances when you tell me you spend the holidays with Miss Turner and didn’t even write me a note. As you said about Miss Corinne being in possession of facts to you unknown “that makes me cross.”
Wilson is getting too gay and giddy — he and John Wagner. I think I will have to take them both in charge of Miss Thorne and Miss Mabry. They are out tonight with them. I think Wilson and John have become one in the same person. I hardly ever see one without the other. They are inseparable.
I have entered the race for State Senate with flattering prospects, I think. Many of the leading people of my district have promised me their support. I think John and Will Wagner will stay with me to the end and I am betting high on Dan Wagner not going against me. Hon. W.V. Moore and Hon. Rowland are both out against me and I am reliably informed that Capt J.T. Blount will run also. If Capt. Blount doesn’t run I will have a walk or if he runs it will split the vote in the county and may defeat both of us. However, I am satisfied that I can carry Grenada County over all three of them. And that will secure my election. This may be egotism and not a reality. I intend to make an energetic fight.
I’m sorry I didn’t tell you last summer that I intended making the race. As you say, it makes you cross. However, I told Miss Corinne, along with Mabry, many other things. Our streets are terrible muddy and we have no lights at all. Now is the time for the young people to turn out at night and walk the streets.
We won the murder case in Lafayette County that we were starting into the day you left. I have a photo of the jury. I will show you.
I hope you will forgive me for writing this terrible hand for it’s my best and is certainty mine. Hoping to hear from you soon.
I am sincerely your friend,
Earl Brewer
