Beschreibung:

Lot of 50 Civil War-era letters from the Gresham family of Macon, GA to Thomas B. Gresham, 2nd GA Battalion Inf. and the Engineer Corps. Ca 1862-1892. Topics include slaves and plantation ownership, the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain, the Siege of Atlanta, Stoneman's Raid, conscription of slaves, Camp Oglethorpe prison, and more. The patriarch of the Gresham family, John Jones Gresham, was born in Burke County, Georgia, January 21, 1812. He was the son of Job and Mary Jones Gresham and attended school at Waynesboro, Richmond Bath, and University of Georgia. He privately studied law and was admitted to the Georgia bar in 1834. He opened a practice in Waynesboro but moved to Macon in 1836. He married Mary Baxter, one of Thomas W. Baxter and Mary Wiley Baxter’s eight children, on May 25, 1843. They had three children together: Thomas B., Leroy, and Mary “Minnie.” Two other children died in infancy. In the 1840s, Gresham quit his law practice and devoted more attention to his plantation, Houston, located south of Macon. Eight of his slaves resided at his home on College Street in Macon, his remaining forty-three slaves lived at Houston. He was elected mayor of Macon in 1843 and 1847. In 1850, he established the Macon Manufacturing Company and served as its president. Four years before the Civil War, he became a judge, and, in 1865, he was elected to the Georgia State Senate. His prestige and power in the Macon community did not mean his children lived an easy, carefree life or secure his assets during the war. Illness constantly plagued his son, Leroy. His agonies only multiplied when a tall chimney, a remnant of a hotel fire, collapsed and broke his left leg when he was nine years old. He never fully recovered from the injury and developed a severe abscess on his back. He weighed only 63 pounds when he was sixteen years of age. According to his diaries held at the Library of Congress, he recorded his oscillating states of health, noting not only the symptoms accompanying his infirmities, but also the remedies: morphine, Dover's Powders, belladonna plasters, and brandy. He absorbed Confederate sympathies from his involved family and community, and, with the energy of a young boy, he fervently wrote about events on the battlefield, the railroad, and rumors whispered at home. In one of his 20 letters to his brother, Leroy wrote, We have just had a visit from Mr. Dayne. His Battalion (the 27th) has just come here to guard the Yankee officers... A Yankee Capt was shot the other night by one of Findlays Batt for cursing him when he ordered him off the line and since then the prisoners have been docile enough (Macon, May 28, 1864). The prison Leroy referenced was Camp Oglethorpe which housed more than 2,300 Union officers in the summer of 1864. Conditions at the camp were similar to most Civil War prisons. Food was scarce, sanitation lacked, and dysentery and scurvy rampaged through the makeshift jail. A friend of Leroy, CSA soldier, Nathan Sayre, confided that, he would rather go to the front than stay [at Oglethorpe] and guard these Yankee prisoners any longer (June 10, 1864). By late July 1864, Union cavalry raids forced the prisoners to move, although some officers stayed until September. Thomas B. and his uncle, Capt. Richard Baxter, shared similar discontent and woes of war as Sayre, but to a greater degree. Thomas B. served in the 2nd GA Battalion Inf. until 1863. He endured gruesome fighting at the Seven Days Battles, 2nd Bull Run, Antietam, Fredericksburg, Gettysburg, and Chickamauga. He transferred to the Engineering Corps in 1864, but pleaded with his father to transfer him to another regiment closer to the front. LeRoy often responded to his older brother's pleas with encouraging messages assuring him that their father would request his transfer. Their father was unable to influence his relocation because Thomas’ superior officer wrote that his services were could not be spared (August 10, 1864). Leroy wrote to Thomas, If you w