“...I never go away from home without my six shooter and bowie knife belted around me.”

Autograph letter signed by "Sam" to his sister Helen. Copano Creek, [Texas], 20 August 1868. 3 pages, 4to, on thin, tissue-like paper.

A Texas Reconstruction letter written by a pioneer planter to his family back east, revealing that the divisions of the Civil War are still fresh and evident in Texas.

Imploring his sister to not share the information with their mother, lest she worry, the author “Sam” shares: "the third of month the rebels went to poor cousin Whelan[?] when he was there, alone, took him away and hung him, swiftly...there is no laws and no respect for life or property here and do just as they please. Cousin W was living in Brazos Co. and there a Union man can't live, Cousin Rufus left home this morning for his home on the Brazos, he wanted me very much to with him I told him I did not like to ride back alone it would be too lonely, he said, 'Yes, cousin Sam and if they only knew who you were you would never get back, it would be the last of you.’”

Sam continues: “There is nothing like the danger here that there in Easton, Texas, still a man is not safe anywhere...I never go away from home without my six shooter and bowie knife belted around me. There is no Society or anything of the kind here. You know you all use[d] to plague me about being such a coward, I have got over all that. I don't think I am afraid of anything now, I am sure I am not afraid of these rebels, but it is unpleasant to say the least living in a country where a man is obliged to go armed to the teeth constantly, and sleep with a revolver by him."

Condition: paper is tissue-like, with neat tissue reinforcement at hinge, with other areas of repair/reinforcement.

[Reconstruction, Civil War, Union, Confederate, Manuscripts, Documents, Letters, Ephemera, Texas]