Creator: Dixon, Harry St. John, 1843-1898.
Collection number: 2375
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Abstract: Native of Mississippi, Confederate officer, and California lawyer. Personal correspondence and diaries of Dixon, consisting chiefly of correspondence between Dixon and his parents while he was a student at the University of Virginia,
1860-1861; a Confederate officer with the 11th Mississippi Infantry Regiment in Virginia; and after the war, when he was a lawyer and rancher in California. His parents lived near Greenville, Miss., and, during part of the Civil War, in Demopolis, Ala. Correspondence concerns family affairs, experiences at the University of Virginia, effects of the war in Mississippi, Dixon’s war experiences, and other matters. Also included is Dixon’s diary, 1858-1865, kept while he was at Greenville, at the University of Virginia, and during the war. Among other items are letters, 1868-1869, to Dixon’s wife, Constance Maynard Dixon, from her grandfather, Duff Green (1791-1875); letters from Dixon’s friend, Henry Ewing, Confederate officer in Tennessee and newspaperman in St. Louis; and photographs of fellow soldiers and students and of others.
Repository: Southern Historical Collection
Collection Highlights: The collection includes correspondence discussing the Fugitive Slave Act (1860); the “fate of negroes who followed enemy’s columns,” (1862); the faithfulness of slaves during the war (1863); the disinclination of former slaves to sign unspecified “contracts” in Alabama (1867); the refusal of former slaves to work for former slaveholders (1867); former slaves as sharecroppers (1869); blacks wearing Union Army uniforms (1869); and the opinions of whites toward blacks following the war (1869). Microfilm available.