CONFEDERATE LETTERS FROM GIFT-HORSE KERFUFFLE AND NEGRO COOK
This pair of letters written in ink on blue lined paper includes:
1) One and one-quarter-page letter, Camp Beauregard, Kentucky, October 24, 1861 from John S. Bowen to Gen. Leonidas Polk, hinged at top to album page. Bowen reluctantly accepted a gift horse belonging to a Mr. Blanchard, an accused spy in his custody. He explains the circumstances to Polk and informs him he has complied with General Pillow's order and surrendered the animal.
2) Two-page letter written on both sides of a single sheet, Knoxville, Tennessee from Col. P. D. Cunningham of the 28th Tennessee Regiment to his sister. He is on the verge of embarking for Murfreesboro and sends her a battlefield pick-up from Baton Rouge. "... I want a negro to cook and wait on me this winter and if father does not send me one I can buy. I have plenty of money and care for nothing save cooking and this I will not do. I offered seven hundred dollars for a little negro boy John down in Miss. Negroes are nearly as high in the South as ever they were." The rather smug and arrogant writer predicts Southern troops will take Nashville in three weeks. He mentions two relatives who were captured at Shiloh and Island No. 10, briefly incarcerated at Camp Douglas, then released