Nov 21, 2024 - Sale 2687

Sale 2687 - Lot 88

Price Realized: $ 2,600
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,500 - $ 2,500
(CIVIL WAR--KENTUCKY.) Letters of a Kentucky Copperhead. 30 letters, 22 of them from P.B. Mason to his wife Kate, 9 of the letters war-dated; various sizes and conditions. Various places, 1857-1885
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Dr. Peter Baynhum Mason (1804-1870) of Danville, KY was a Copperhead opponent of the war and of Lincoln's government; he writes sympathetically of the Confederate army and of Copperhead leader Clement Vallandigham. His letters, often laced with heavy sarcasm, are to his fourth wife, Katherine "Kate" White Shreve Mason. Her son William Shreve was a Confederate soldier who died in a Union prison camp in 1863.

He offers slices of life in an unsettled border state. His 31 October 1862 letter was written shortly after the nearby Battle of Perryville: "I went into Danville the first time since the battle at Perryville, and picked up a Georgia soldier and brought him home with me. He is quite a dull genius and I will get clear of him in a few days." He adds that in Stanford, KY "some of the Southern Rights people had to leave there on account of a marauder by the name of Bridgewater who said he would kill 1000 of them for the hanging of King whom, he says, the Rebels hung."

On 29 March 1863 he describes a successful Confederate cattle raid: "The Rebels drove the Yankies from Danville and occupied it for a while. There were about 300 of the Rebels made a charge upon them in Danville and routed them completely, driving them to the Kentucky bridge, and there holding them till they brought up about 3000 head of cattle and many horses, and started with them back south again. The Rebels burnt the Dicks River bridge yesterday morning and left. . . . They will go out with their cattle & the Yankies are too cowardly to fight them. General Fry could not get his men to make a stand near Danville."

On 22 October 1863, he discusses Union requisitions of his livestock and enslaved people: "I have soald my hogs to Gen. Burnsides for $4.00. He has taken all the hogs in this & surrounding country. . . . I suppose our railroad opperations are going on well, as the undertakin has discharged Zac for incompetency. They want me to furnish another hand, but I shall not furnish any more ginerals to Burnside or Rosecranz, for I am runn out of ginerals now." He also mocks Andrew Johnson: "Gov. Johnson told the Nashville jubilants over Vallandingham's defeat that white men can raise cotton, for he had worked in it, and could pick more than any Negro he ever saw. I suppose he intends to supercede the Negro in that business."

Also included are two of Kate's letters to her husband, including a postwar 11 October 1866 description of the Green County Agricultural and Mechanical Association fair in Greensburg, KY. It did not go smoothly: "We had quite an uproar yesterday, one man killed and another badly wounded early in the day. The Sullivans, five in number, attacked the Moore boys on the promenade. Some of the men put them out of the fairgrounds. They were then followed by about a dozen men. Just as soon as they got them out of the grounds, they commenced shooting at them. One of them died this morning, the other is badly wounded. I hope that will be sufficient for this fair."

Also from just after the war is a letter from an old Kentucky friend, T.H. Many, who has relocated to Canton, MS and reflects on the Lost Cause: "Well, the long, tedious and bloody struggle has ended and it has left me at the bottom of the ladder. We gained nothing by the war, but lost everything. Some have lost their means of support, some large possessions, and again others have lost their loved ones whose presence will never gladden their eyes again on this weary earth. . . . I would have rather died a soldier's death . . . than to live to see what a fate befell us. . . . You may probably be surprised at my post office, for I am now staying on a plantation managing freedmen at present. They annoy me greatly, for they are some trouble indeed" (14 October 1865).