Alexander Bruce was a Virginia historian who in 1889 wrote The Plantation Negro As Freeman, whose premise was that slavery had benefited Negroes, and they would revert to barbarism because they had been freed. Bruce’s book was a popular gift item in the South. Jefferson Davis hailed it as showing the true condition, but others were less willing to endorse it. Former Confederate General Joseph R. Anderson sent Grover Cleveland a copy just two months after he left office following his first term, and the ex-President damned it with very faint praise.
Autograph Letter Signed, New York , May 8, 1889, to General Anderson. “Accept my thanks for Mr. Bruce’s book which you kindly sent me. I have not yet read it entirely through but it seems to me that the subject of which it treats is handled by the author with great intelligence, and my imperfect perusal of it leads me to think that its writer intends to be just and fair.”