Important Civil War Soldier Archive 17 Letters Detailed Accounts Related to Slavery and Abolition Taking Runaway Slave to New York Abolitionist Meetings

Item Details

Archive of 17 letters from the Quick family from 1859 to 1862.  The letters are primarily from Charles B Quick, a Civil War soldier from New York while he is in Virginia and North Carolina. The letters include some exceptional content related to slavery and abolition including talking about talking a runaway slave boy home to New York and finding the family of a runaway slave in North Carolina.   It also offers a detailed account of plantation slaves working for the Union Army and an abolitionist meeting from 1859.  There is also content related to battles and camp life and much more.  It says in part:

I have got the smartest little negro boy in Washington in the morning before I am up he comes into my tent and puts everything up in its place and brushes my clothes and blacks my coats and when I get up he is there with a dish of water and a towel for me to wash them, he makes up my bed and sweeps outage tent sets the table for breakfast and brings in my breakfast then washes the dishes and ready for anything you want him to do.  He says he wants to go home with me when I go for he is afraid his master will get het him when the war is over, his master is in the Rebel Army and almost kill him.  His mother is here too and she said if his master ever got him he would surely kill him for running away so I guess I will fetch him home with me.  I did not think I would ever have a slave work for me but when his mother came to me and wanted me to take him  and let him earn his bread I took him.  He looked so hungry and ragged I gave him a good meal and one of my shirts and a cap and some shoes and pants and he looked quite like a soldier….

Tell Ezra that I want him to see darkie Charley and ask him what his right name is and where he came from.  If he is where he can see him.  I think his wife and children are here and if they are I will try to send them to him.  There is a colored man here who knows him and he thinks and says his family is here in this town.  Tell Ezra not to say anything about it to anyone else…

Most of the buildings are negro huts and houses that belong to the poor white people who do not live in any better situation than the negroes…

The President was in our camp yesterday and I had the honor of shaking hands with him but I would rather shake hands with someone that would give me something to eat for I am half starved to death…President Lincoln and General Banks and General McClellan was here last Sunday and made us a visit…

You will see that the abolitionists had a meeting last evening which was not suffered to go on without interruption.  In fact but for the appearance of the police they would have been roughly handled.  The decision of the commissioner in the recent slave case is reprobated by I should think at least three courts of our citizens.  It is accounted for by the fact that the commissioner is an anti-slavery quaker lawyer so I am told. The people talk of holding a meeting to condemn his course.  If they do it will be a rusher….

Newbern is a very nice place indeed we are by the side of a large cotton field and the plantation of a secessionist who ran away at the time of the battle.  There is a good many slaves here in fact all the people that are left here are slaves.  They are having a long holiday for them, many of them work for Uncle Sam and are getting 8 dollars a month.  There has been about 500 to work not eh fort ever since we have been here if you ask them who they belong to they say General Burnside and they say that he is the best master they ever had.  I wish you was here to see some of their plantation break downs as they call them you cannot form any idea what kind of beings they are until you have been to a plantation.  They are not allowed to read or know anything they keep them as ignorant as possible but once in a while one who is smart enough has learned to read a few words.  I have seen some that are more intelligent than white people, there is not many of the poor class of white folks who can spell their names, they all look more like negroes than they do like white people….