Mar 28, 2019 - Sale 2503

Sale 2503 - Lot 319

Price Realized: $ 531
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 800 - $ 1,200
"LARGE, ROBUST-LOOKING FELLOWS AND SMART AS A WHIP" (MILITARY--CIVIL WAR.) A white Union soldier's letter describing the new regiments of Colored Troops. Autograph Letter Signed "Sam" to an unidentified brother. 6 pages on 2 folding 7 1/2 x 9 1/2-inch sheets, minor wear. Brashear City [Morgan City], LA, 17 May 1863
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An unidentified soldier describes the rapid recruitment of freedmen as soldiers for the Colored Troops in Louisiana. "There was a lot of officers from the Army of the Potomac arrived here the other day to command in the nigger brigade. They are enlisting men fast . . . . They come down from above in droves of thousands & the officers take them up to camp, strip them & then examine them, make them jump &c to show their qualities, then make them go into the river & have a good wash, then put on regimentals & you would not know them, it changes them greatly. They make pretty good-looking soldiers." Discussing the local cotton crop, he adds "The negroes come very handy, for they know where all this stuff is hid. They are very much pleased to tell our officers all about it, and go to show them. They are drilling reg'ts of them to hold the places here when we go home, and bully soldiers they make too. I would like to have some of the northern people who know so much and think the negro knows nothing out here to see them drill. They are most all large, robust-looking fellows and smart as a whip, and come to put on a uniform on them, they take great pride in it." We would guess the soldier was from the Boston area, as he makes a couple of references to reports in his hometown newspaper, "The Transcript." A month after this letter was written, a Confederate raiding party captured Brashear City, and took 2,000 African Americans--some of them likely the ones our author saw training.