Civil War-era letters to be auctioned

Civil War-era letters to be auctioned

	Published : Sat, 29 Sep 2007 09:41 By : Agencies Print this Story

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) - Thomas Willcox tooled around for months in his sport utility vehicle as 11 manilla folders full of documents plucked from his parents' closet shared the space with his hunting rifles and other clutter.

It wasn't until his wife went to the beach for a day about six years ago that he got bored and went through the old papers, then realized that three of them were signed by Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee.

'I said, `This is something,'' recalled Willcox, a 69-year-old former real estate developer. 'I said, `These are not just run-of-the-mill stuff.''

And so began a journey that has led Willcox and his 440 Civil War-era letters into a court fight with the state, then bankruptcy and now to an auction house where experts say they could fetch Willcox more than $2 million as the documents are sold off one by one Saturday.

The collection details life in South Carolina between 1861 and 1863. Many of the letters are correspondence between generals and the Confederate government and Govs. Francis Wilkinson Pickens and Milledge Luke Bonham.

'The strength of the enemy, as far as I am able to judge, exceeds the whole force that we have in the state,' Lee wrote to Pickens on Dec. 27, 1861. 'It can be thrown with great celerity against any point, and far outnumbers any force we can bring against it in the field.'

Other letters are from residents asking for help defending their communities or for the return of slaves taken from plantations to help build fortifications. Some document the grisly details of war.

'But shall I tell you now of the battlefield?' Sgt. Maj. William S. Mullins of the 8th Regiment of South Carolina Volunteers wrote in an Aug. 6, 1861, letter about the first Battle of Manassas. 'Of the dead hideous in every form of ghastly death: heads off, arms off, abdomens protruding, every form of wound, low groans, sharp cries ... convulsive agonies as the souls took flight. It is useless to write. I know something of the power of words to paint and I tell you that a man must see all this to conceive it.'

When historical documents are sold, their content, age and condition determine their value, said Patrick Scott, director of rare books and special collections at the University of South Carolina's Thomas Cooper Library.

'An individual who owned original documents from a significant figure in the Civil War, particularly Southern collectors, would feel very, very triumphant if they were able to purchase something that they wanted in a sale like this,' said Scott, who regularly purchases rare manuscripts for the university's collection.

The most that any Lee letter ever sold for was $630,000 in 2002, Scott said. Two letters by the confederate general were sold last year for $5,000 and $1,900, he said.

Willcox's letters were supposed to be auctioned in 2004. But the state stepped in and sued, claiming they were written as part of official state business and were the property of South Carolina. A federal judge ruled last year that Willcox owned the collection, which were in his family for generations before he discovered them in his parents' home after they died.

The legal spat led Willcox to file for bankruptcy, but he now hopes it will finally pay off.

'It's sort of a culmination of seven or eight years of wondering if it's ever going to happen,' Willcox said.

Cal Packard, a private buyer from Mansfield, Ohio, said he planned to bid on about 100 of the letters.

'My interest in them started five years ago,' Packard said Friday as he examined the letters. 'I see documents like this all the time, but to have a concentration like this is unusual.'

One entity that won't be trying to get the documents is the state. Officials from several agencies have told The Associated Press that South Carolina won't be bidding -- in part because they have been recorded on microfilm.

'To spend the state's money on something we believe already belongs to the state goes against principle,' said Charles Lesser, senior archivist for the Department of Archives and History.

The state's decision surprised auction house owner Bill Mishoe. 'They went through a lot of trouble to get them, so to give up now is something I have trouble understanding,' he said.