6th Connecticut Letter on Slaves

This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 3/15/2018

War-date Union soldier’s Autograph Letter Signed by Halsey Bartlett, 6th Connecticut Infantry, KIA at Bermuda Hundred, 13pp. octavo, Beaufort, South Carolina, October 15, 1862, and reads in part: “...I am on my post on picket guard on Caper’s Plantation...There is nothing but Negroes live there, and we had a chat with them all. They appeared very glad to see us. There is some girls on these plantations that are nearly white and as handsome as any white girl up north, while others, some are yello and some are so black. I don’t know if I should take hold of their hands. They would crack me. Some of the blackest people I ever saw in my life. There is Filer’s Plantation and Rose’s Plantation on the right of this and WIlliam Barnwell and two others on the left of us. I have visited and the people are not all alike on the plantations, some are. Some are afraid of their lives and stand in great fear that the Secesh will come back and take them away, while others are contented with their lot and say that they had no fear of it. Some complain bitterly of their children being away from them. Some are very talkative and you can sit down and talk with them and they tell you their whole history as far back and tell who owned them first...one Negro...told me that when he began to be sick, his Master (Dr. Frank Capers)...would whip him fifty lashes on the bare back. Some say their Masters are very kind...They have meetings (the Negroes do) every other night and every other morning they will get up at three o’clock and go at it as if they are going to die right off. They get so happy in their meetings that they don’t know what to do hardly...we had a general wedding yesterday. The colored people were all married over again. They were married according to their (slave) way, but yesterday they were married according to Yankee Style...There was some twenty or twenty five couples married yesterday...” Much more. Fine condition.

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