Letter from Charleston, December 16, 1877 (continuation)
Book 1, Page 204 ·1877
Transcription
Two handwritten pages of cursive ink mounted on a dark backing, continuing the December 16, 1877 letter from page 203. The torn upper edge of the left page has cropped the first lines.
The left-hand sheet:
[Top edge torn; first lines incomplete.] better but she does not wear her shoes yet. Uncle Adam is out, & at his business but very feeble — Uncle John is perfectly happy with Kate, & Kate keeps alive on his fun — She tells me she is sleeping in the French bedstead with curtains, & feels like Royalty itself, under a canopy, when the procession halts. says the sensation when she gets in is like being in the bottom of an omnibus! Fannie & Mr Heyward spent a day in town after their return from Baltimore, Fannie said Thomas had been sick but was out again — She was delighted with the brightness of Baltimore streets & dresses — & had been constantly to the Park, & quite often to the Theatre otherwise her visit did not seem
The right-hand sheet:
to have been out of the family round of visits. — She & Mr Heyward dined here & were very pleasant. Louisa has one of her dreadful colds — Tody is in Cola attending the supreme Court — was very forlorn at leaving home, but will only be absent two nights. The election yesterday of some of the lowest radicals to judgeships — a black man to the principal one will make life & property more insecure than ever & the practice of law an odious thing to our men. Tody & Louisa went to the Cotillion Club Ball — Louisa looked very well in her lavender silk & appliqué lace which she wore to
AI Notes
Two facing manuscript pages mounted side-by-side, continuing the Charleston letter begun on page 203 (December 16, 1877). The writer reports on Uncle Adam being out at business but feeble, Uncle John happy with Kate (sleeping in a curtained French bedstead), Fannie’s and Mr Heyward’s day in town after their return from Baltimore (where Thomas had been sick), Louisa’s dreadful cold, Tody (Theodore Gaillard Barker) in Columbia attending the Supreme Court, the recent radical/Reconstruction-era election of judges including a Black man to a principal judgeship — viewed by the writer as making ‘life & property more insecure than ever’ — and Tody and Louisa attending the Cotillion Club Ball with Louisa in lavender silk and appliqué lace. Significant corrections to prior pass: ‘Vacaim’ → ‘Louisa’ (Louisa Preston King, Tody’s wife); ‘Said Thomas’ → ‘said Thomas’; ‘Toby’ → ‘Tody’ throughout; preserved the writer’s Reconstruction-era political rhetoric verbatim. ‘Cola’ = Columbia, S.C.
Letter continues on next scan.
The bitter aside on the “election yesterday … of some of the lowest radicals to judgeships — a black man to the principal one” is the voice of Charleston gentry at the close of Reconstruction in South Carolina. Wade Hampton III had been inaugurated governor only eight months earlier (April 1877), but Republican judges still held many seats; “Tody” — Theodore Gaillard Barker, the compiler’s great-uncle — was practicing in those courts at Columbia.