Nov 21, 2024 - Sale 2687

Sale 2687 - Lot 205

Price Realized: $ 16,250
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 800 - $ 1,200
(RECONSTRUCTION.) William C. Towle. A Union Army physician describes the first year of occupation in Georgia. 24 Autograph Letters Signed to his wife Ann Elizabeth Warren Towle in Fryeburg, ME; minimal wear, many with original envelopes. Georgia, July 1865 to March 1866
Set Alert for Similar Items

Additional Details

William Clement Towle (1830-1900) had a medical practice in Fryeburg, ME, and served as the assistant surgeon of the 12th Maine in the Civil War, staying on with the army until April 1866. These letters were written during the post-war occupation in Georgia, mostly in Darien and Savannah, with some letters also from Hawkinsville and Brunswick.

In a postscript to his 6 August 1865 letter, he announces that he has been promoted to full surgeon and made the commander of the post hospital in Darien. On 6 September he describes a "frolic" in which "the Negroes and white men were all dancing together promiscuously . . . and good fun it is too to see the darky dance. He enters into it so with his whole spirit." A plantation owner "told me that none of his Blacks had left him, but had worked along the same as ever. He thought he could make more with free labor than slave. At any rate, he was glad that they were free, for it was relieving him of a great responsibility in taking care of the old and young."

On 4 October he describes his servant, "a good little boy who I have had since I left Hawkinsville. I think I will take him home. He is about 14 years old, very steady, and will be a great help to you at home. . . . I suppose help is very scarce there, but there is plenty of it here which one can get for the feeding." The boy went with him to Savannah, but then disappeared, as he "liked to be on the street better than doing his work. I believe he found an aunt of his where he is now stopping." (The Towles did not have a live-in servant in the 1870 census).

The 5 December letter describes the arrest of a Major Hastings for "speculating in cotton and defrauding government. . . . They came out to the reg't for no other purpose than to make all they could out of the gov. . . . There is no doubt but what he has sold gov cotton and pocketed the money." On 7 December he describes a day spent with General David Tillson of Maine, serving with the Freedmen's Bureau: "He had a meeting called and gave the citizens, white and black, clear and concise ideas upon how they were to live together in the future. . . . He is very plain-spoken, tells the people white and black what they must do and what they may depend upon if they don't."

His 1 January 1866 letter describes an opportunity to go into cotton-planting with former Confederate general John B. Gordon: "He owns an interest in one of the Sea Islands near here and wants me to go in with him in raising a crop of cotton this year. . . . It would take between two and three thousand dollars apiece to get the ground in preparation, buying the mules and tools, and feeding the Negroes." This apparently came to naught, but on 23 February he ventured into the country "with an old English planter to regulate the colored people. . . . I gave the freedmen a good lecture on what they must do and expect. The harder they work, the more they would get. They are to have half the crop. . . . The most of the Negroes here have but little confidence in what their former owners tell them, but if a Yankee tells them the same thing, they readily believe it."