Creator: Miscellaneous letters.
Collection number: 516
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Abstract: Single or very small groups of unrelated letters, many from the 19th century, to and from various persons, especially southerners who were prominent in the literary and political areas. Topics include family life; travels in North Carolina and other parts of the South; social life and customs; plantation life; slavery and slave sales North Carolina, Maryland, and other places; local and national politics; the Civil War, both military action and the homefront in Louisiana, North Carolina (including blockading the coast and attacking Fort Fisher), Mississippi, and other parts of the South; the University of North Carolina; World War I; literature; and other topics. Among the correspondents are Abiel Abbott, Henry Ward Beecher, Alfred Holt Colquitt, Sherman Converse, Peter Early, Frank Porter Graham, Sam Houston, Washington Irving, Andrew Jackson, Laura Riding Jackson, North Carolina governor Samuel Johnston, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, John Milledge, Margaret Mitchell, Wilson Cary Nicholas, North Carolina writer William S. Pearson, Isaac F. Shepard, Edward Stanly, Edward Telfair, Albion W. Tourg?e, Martin Van Buren, Abraham Bedford Venable, and Daniel Webster.
Repository: Southern Historical Collection
Collection Highlights: Folder 42B contains an 1855 letter from R. Tillotson in , which discusses among other topics the religious practices of enslaved people on his property.
Folder 59 contains two letters (2 and 24 March 1882) written by H. Church of London, England, thanking the Honorable Reverend William H. Fremantle, Anglican Churchman, for the loan of a copy of Goldwin Smith’s “Does the Bible Sanction American Slavery?”
Folder 105 contains a letter dated 12 December 1839 from Sherman Converse in North Carolina, who wrote about his impressions of slavery and plantations life.
Folder 109 contains a letter from 10 November 1831 from S.B. Husband of Maryland. Husband was writing on behalf of her friend Thomas Brown, Rachel’s owner, who, after returning home after a long absence, discovered that Rachel was about to sold to someone else. There were disagreements as to what should happen to Rachel and the letter relates Husband’s fear that Rachel would be freed.
Folder 110 contains a 1797 bill of sale for an enslaved woman named Hanah [?] in North Carolina.