Raynors HCA 2017-02
This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 2/23/2017
A scarce, lengthy, and eloquent missive from a noted chaplain of a distinguished black unit. Storrow Higginson, a Harvard-educated poet and writer who rubbed elbows with the Transcendentalists, writes a friend who has not yet embraced Emancipation hoping to bring him along. HIGGINSON, Samuel Storrow (1841-1907) as the nephew of minister, editor, literary critic author, soldier, and militant abolitionist Thomas Wentworth Higginson. Storrow shared many traits with his uncle: he was also an abolitionist, minister, led a regiment of black troops during the Civil War, and eventually pursued literary and publishing opportunities. Autograph Letter Signed “Starrow Higginson, 9th U.S.C.T./25th Corps. 1st Division/Army of the James/Washington, D.C.”, on U.S. Christian Commission lettersheets, 8 pp., 4-3/4” x 8”, nd. In part, “our letter Clifford gave me both joy and sorrow. ... Our paths—so far as the humanitarian question goes—are too divergent at present to admit of mutual sympathy in the direction of Emancipation—would they could meet! but as I believe fidelity to what is highest in us should be the rule of action, not opinions of others. I never feel discouraged for an instant because I am alone but only at times of sorrowful lose (?) unto tears. I write these Confidential thoughts to you because I feel that there a between us an affinity of task and temperament and that what you suffer is but the reflection of my own sufferings. ... This life is killing me slowly but I cannot murmur (?) when I think how sublime is the opportunity that has fallen to our generation, and if others so cheerfully give the dearest gifts of Earth in the defense of an idea they neither understand nor dare to confess! I can gladly offer health and self for a definite object, Emancipation (for this is the idea of the war to me) ...
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