2023-08 Raynors HCA Live
This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 8/26/2023
Five page letter written by Wm. H. Thompson to Samuel Batchelder, Esq. datelined Williards Hotel, Washington D.C. April 16, 1866. In part, Went down the Chesapeake Bay to Fortress Monroe & up the James River to Richmond, seeing many things of interest. ..One day visited the Battleground around Petersburg & found Fort Stedman & the crater where Genl. Burnside blew up a Rebel fort to be of much interest & there picked up several bullets & saw many freedmen digging for shot and shell. ...In Richmond I was told that one man had shipped more than 50 tons of lead cast from minnie balls picked up by colored people. ... I was shocked to see soldiers skulls and sometimes nearly whole sets of bones laying on the ground & sometimes saw toes of shoes from jutting out of the ground ... The sights are sickening. The crater has been enclosed by the owner of the land & now visitors pay 25 cents admission to see the same. ... Castle Thunder & Libby Prison are hard places or have been. Belle Island looks like a hard place to live. ..;. I went all over Tredegar Iron Works & found they could make and turn 9 of the largest solid cast iron guns at one time, with a railway running right over & across each lathe with a screw to lift them in front of the lathes. .. The White people of Richmond are not disposed to work much, but seem to rely on the Blacks to do all the work for them. .. ... Had President Johnson carried a steady hand with the Southern people & demanded works meet for repentance, I believe their condition now & for the future would have been better. ..."
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