Autograph letter signed by Agnes E. Patteson (b. 1835), to her cousin Jim. Hickory Hill, [Hinds County, Mississippi], 9 July 1865. 3 pages, 4to, 7 5/8 x 9 3/4 in.

A fascinating letter written in the immediate aftermath of the war from the Deep South reflecting the profound anxiety many former Confederates felt. The author, a 30 year old woman of Hinds County, Mississippi, writes to her cousin with updates upon the Reconstruction troops in the county: "I have seen very few Yankees - no colored soldiers at all. There are a great many in the country tho' but none have been here. Our provisional governor has ordered a convention so all are expecting that it will not be long before civil law will be in force & the Yankee soldiers will all leave the state."

She launches into a lengthy meditation on the downfall of the Confederacy: "I am sorry that you seem so low-spirited about the downfall of the Confederacy. It is surely an awful fate that will be ours & is enough to make me feel desponding, but ought we not to think that God, who holdeth the destiny of Nations in His hand, has so willed it for some good purpose & so ought to submit with all possible good, hoping that a better day is awaiting us. You might certainly take comfort from a consciousness of having faithfully performed your duty in this war. I am proud of the part you took in it. I think if all others had acted as well that we would never have been subjugated. I try to be as little troubled as possible about it & am as happy & contented as I could be anywhere away from you. We have ever enough to be grateful for even when the darkest shadows rest upon our paths & so long we both have health & love one another, I know we will be happy here & I hope that we may both try to lead just that life that will best fit us for a home in heaven hereafter. I thank you, my dearest cousin, for thinking of me whenever you are troubled & my sincerest wish is that I had it in my power to make your life as bright & happy as I wish it. Be sure that you will ever have my love & that, 'If ever fondest prayer for others weal availed on high / Mine will not all be lost in air but waft thy name above the sky.'"

Hinds County, encompassing part of the Mississippi capitol Jackson, was strongly pro-Confederate with the white leadership not celebrating American Independence Day for nearly 80 years after the conclusion of the Civil War. Residents still live with a statue in front of the Raymond Court House honoring the Confederate soldiers bearing an inscription that reads, in part: "Erected...in grateful memory of their men who in 1861-1865 gave or offered to give their lives in defense of constitutional government and to the heroic women whose devotion to our cause in its darkest hour sustained the strong and strengthened the weak."

Condition: light dampstains, old folds, minor even toning.

[Civil War, Confederate, Union, Reconstruction, Slavery, Abolition, Enslavement, Emancipation, Manuscripts, Letters, Documents, Ephemera]