2025-01 Raynors Historical Collectible Auctions
Absentee bidding for this session ends on Saturday, January 25, 2025 at 10:00 AM EST.
The live portion of this session begins on Saturday, January 25, 2025 at 10:00 AM EST
A Confederate Soldier’s 4pp. letter written to his father on CSA Patriotic Seven-Star letter head, with original cover by Private E.G. Russell, 5th South Carolina Infantry. Datelined:Fort Moultrie Sullivan's Island April 30th, 1861. In large part, “I hasten to answer yours of the 26th which was received today. There must be great mismanagement through the mail agents or Post Masters, for I have not failed to write two or three times a week since I left hom, ... Quiet still prevails among us, but the blessed Bestower of this and all other gifts only knows how long it will continue. However, I have this sweet consolation that let whatever may come, I am prepared to meet it. Col. Jenkins is anxious to have his Regiment go to Virginia and will lay a proposal to that effect before the Regiment either for approval or rejection. As for my own part, I am willing to go wherever my services will be most conducive to the interest of the commonwealth. You were misinformed regarding the storming of Fort Pickens. The rumor was without foundation. There have been several sad recurrences in the Chester Companies, originating from drinking sprees. I was told that 3 men were killed last week. ... Our mess which numbers 11 is filled in two comfortable rooms in the second story of the Moultrie House. Our furniture consists of two spring bottomed sofas, 12 chairs, two of which are rockers. We have 5 good mattresses, one cot, and 2 bureaus & one large dining table, which I neglected to mention in the above list of furniture. Thus for some of us are as well situated as we would be at home, but now for the contrast (which is our rations), rancid bacon, sour tough and colored loaf, quite elastic, the meanest of coffee, though it is rendered so by the water of which it is made. as the well water here is rather brackish, and rice which when it has gone through the cooking process and is served to us by our scrupulously, cleanly, and very experienced cook (minor free boy from Uncle J's neighborhood) looks as though it might have been seasoned with soot. One might sometimes come to the ridiculous conclusion that he had misunderstood the duty assigned to him and had prepared a mess for a parcel of chickens instead of a meal for white men from the quantity of sand in it. ... I have no doubt but that your influence & ministrations would be productive of great good to the Regiment through divine blessing ...”
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