Letter, 4 Apr. 1877, Columbia, S.C., to W.H. Gibbes, Nathaniel Barnwell, and Hugh S. Thompson, re omission of Preston's name from "the Delegation to the Diocesan Convention."
Two letters, 4 Oct. 1873 and 7 June 1874, from John Smith Preston, in New York and Baltimore, to his grandson John Preston Darby, express a grandfather's affection and the earlier one mentions the "Revolving advertisements" in New York City. "I see Barnums Circus pass nearly every day. Last time there were Six Elephants - drawing one carriage - and eight Camels drawing another - with the Band in it - and there were about a hundred men and women - in Spangles and gold - on horseback."
Additions to his earlier papers. Include typescript drafts of articles, essays, and short fiction pieces (with annotations by Michael F. Lowenthal, and revisions by Preston) and related correspondence. Titles include: "Charlie", "The Importance of Telling our Stories", and "Franny. Again. Of Course."
This collection contains documents regarding John Preston's business affairs; including promissory notes, loan agreements, and personal correspondence. Many of the documents appear to be draft versions which were at one point bound together, perhaps in Preston's own letter-book.
During the last nine months of the Civil War, virtually all of the news reports and President Jefferson Davis's correspondence confirmed the imminent demise of the Confederate States, the nation Davis had striven to uphold since 1861. But despite defeat after defeat on the battlefield, a recalcitrant Congress, naysayers in the press, disastrous financial conditions, failures in foreign policy and peace efforts, and plummeting national morale, Davis remained in office and tried to maintain the government -- even after the fall of Richmond -- until his capture by Union forces on May 10, 1865. The eleventh volume of The Papers of Jefferson Davis follows the last tumultuous months of the Confederacy and illuminates Davis's policies, feelings, ideas, and relationships, as well as the viewpoints of hundreds of southerners -- critics and supporters -- who asked for favors, pointed out abuses, and offered advice on myriad topics. Printed here for the first time are many speeches and a number of new letters and telegrams. In the course of the volume, Robert E. Lee officially becomes general in chief, Joseph E. Johnston is given a final command, legislation is enacted to place slaves in the army as soldiers, and peace negotiations are opened at the highest levels. The closing pages chronicle Davis's dramatic flight from Richmond, including emotional correspondence with his wife as the two endeavor to find each other en route and make plans for the future in the wreckage of their lives. The holdings of seventy different manuscript repositories and private collections in addition to numerous published sources contribute to Volume 11, the fifth in the Civil War period.
After Lee and Grant met at Appomatox Court House in 1865 to sign the document ending the long and bloody Civil War, the South at last had to face defeat as the dream of a Confederate nation melted into the Lost Cause. Through an examination of memoirs, personal papers, and postwar Confederate rituals such as memorial day observances, monument unveilings, and veterans' reunions, Ghosts of the Confederacy probes into how white southerners adjusted to and interpreted their defeat and explores the cultural implications of a central event in American history. Foster argues that, contrary to southern folklore, southerners actually accepted their loss, rapidly embraced both reunion and a New South, and helped to foster sectional reconciliation and an emerging social order. He traces southerners' fascination with the Lost Cause--showing that it was rooted as much in social tensions resulting from rapid change as it was in the legacy of defeat--and demonstrates that the public celebration of the war helped to make the South a deferential and conservative society. Although the ghosts of the Confederacy still haunted the New South, Foster concludes that they did little to shape behavior in it--white southerners, in celebrating the war, ultimately trivialized its memory, reduced its cultural power, and failed to derive any special wisdom from defeat.
In the inflammatory rhetoric of state-appointed commissioners dispatched to preach the secessionist cause, Charles Dew finds what he maintains are the true causes of the Civil War and its legacy of racism in contemporary America.