Heading: (African American, 1866)
Author: Winfield, John Quincy
Title: Postwar letter from a Doctor and ex-Confederate Cavalry Captain, writes of property taken over by ex-slaves and the general state of depressed spirits in the “old Virginia” which was “no more”
Place Published: Hanover Court House, Virginia
Publisher:
Date Published: June 3, 1866
Description:

Autograph Letter Signed. 4 pp. To his wife.

Winfield writes while visiting friends in a small town north of Richmond, where he met a young woman who had a "fair chance of recovering her property at present in the possession of the freedmen." She was more fortunate than one of his relatives, whose home had been "torn to pieces" during the War. In general, "People here are much depressed in spirits - they will never rise and old V[irginia] will soon be old V[irginia] no more."

A doctor who owned a small farm, with a dozen slaves, in the beautiful Shenandoah Valley, Winfield had raised his own Volunteer Cavalry company from among his neighbors, remaining in command for a year before being wounded and forced to resign from military service. When he wrote this letter, still suffering from rheumatism and facial tumors, he was on his way to a health resort, where he spent long periods of time away from his family, in medicated recuperation. A benign slave-owner no more, Winfield closes his letter to his wife asking his wife to "remember me to all the servants."

Sadly resigned to Confederate defeat, his restrained words were a far cry from rabble-rousing speeches he had delivered five years before, about "washing the foundation stone" of the Capitol with a "torrent of blood" rather than "suffering the Black Republicans" to "celebrate their triumph and hold their orgies" in that "Temple of Liberty".

Discoloration at folds of first page, not affecting legibility; good.