Matthew Gaines
Gaines quoted in Houston Telegraph (conservative) on June 29, 1871, saying he will not support any but a Black man for Congress: “Let us not turn the mill for other men to eat the meal. We have been putting white Republicans in office enough. Now the time has come to put a colored man in.”1
A letter from Louis W. Stevenson to O. O. Howard, May 10, 1870, concerning a school in Brenham, mentions Stevenson’s having consulted Gaines.2 Other letters about the matter follow on the reel.