Weekly Democrat-Times clipping

Harris, John F., 1827-1913; Horton, Gilbert, -1894

A few days ago we observed lawyer J. F. Harris, colored, of the Greenville Bar, industriously at work over a job of carpentering. Upon asking for an explanation, he informed us that he had read the Democratic assurances that he would not be re-enslaved. But white folks were “mighty onsartin,” and he thought he would gradually get his hand in at this old trade. We tried to re-assure him some by saying that his new master might continue him at the law. Harris said he “couldn’t quite take that in. That we would next be assuring him that Gilbert Horton's master would return him to the Legislature: and Anderson Levy to the Justiceship he now adorns.”

As we turned to leave him, ruminating over this evidence of the waste of “Democratic assurances,” the attorney-carpenter said, “and besides Captain, law business is powerful dull.”