(SLAVERY AND ABOLITION) Manigault Gabriel A plantation owner

Sale 2503 - Lot 86

Price Realized: $ 5,000

?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price

Estimate: $ 2,500 - $ 3,500

(SLAVERY AND ABOLITION.) Manigault, Gabriel. A plantation owner near the front lines scrambles to keep his human property. Autograph Letter Signed to his wife in Wright's Bluff, Clarendon County, SC. 3 pages, 9 1/4 x 7 1/4 inches, on one folding sheet, with stamped address panel on verso; seal tear, minimal wear at folds. Romney Plantation [McClellanville, SC], 23 May 1862

Set Alert for Similar Items

Additional Details

In this letter, major South Carolina slaveholder Gabriel Manigault (1809-1888) makes a frantic effort to move his human property away from the continuing Union offensive against Charleston, and to keep them productive. "The lateness of the season and general sickness of the negroes rendered it impossible to plant but a few acres. . . . I immediately gave notice to several families of negroes that I would carry them to the Wambau settlement tomorrow. I brought over 43 with a flat load of their things and stopped them here, not wishing to expose many of them, being invalids, to the night on the water. . . . I shall endeavor to plant a good part of a crop at Romney, even if I should have to move the negroes afterwards, which will depend much on what happens about Charleston. . . . Get a foothold in Clarendon district either by purchase or hire of some small tract, to which I may carry negroes if necessary, and I will immediately begin to put up some log houses on it. . . . Endeavor to make Clarendon agreeable to such negroes as I send up there, that they may make a good report of the land."