Auction Name: 2026 February 26 Historical Manuscripts & Texana Signature® Auction

Lot Number: 47145

Shortcut to Lot: HA.com/6328*47145

Civil War Archive of Captain John Simonton Wilson of the 1st South Carolina Cavalry. An extensive archive comprising the correspondence, photographs, and related ephemera of the Wilson family of South Carolina, including more than one hundred Civil War-date letters from Captain John Simonton Wilson of the 1st South Carolina Cavalry. Captain Wilson served throughout the duration of the war, fighting in South Carolina, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, most notably at the Battles of Brandy Station and Gettysburg in 1863. His letters chronicle his time in the Confederate Army in striking detail, from the early days of his enlistment to his late-war duty at the Florence Stockade. Many of these letters retain their original transmittal covers, several with Confederate postage stamps still intact. Each of Wilson's war-date letters has been fully transcribed, and a Microsoft Word file containing the complete transcriptions will be provided to the buyer.

Wilson's letters are accompanied by more than 50 war-date letters from his wife, Jane Rosborough Wilson, writing to her husband from the home front in South Carolina. In addition to this wartime correspondence, the archive includes more than one hundred and thirty letters written by Wilson and his family between 1841 and 1900, of which approximately one hundred and two date to the Reconstruction period (1866-1877). These letters document the Wilson family's efforts to rebuild their lives in the aftermath of defeat, addressing poverty, labor arrangements with formerly enslaved people, political uncertainty, education, religion, and the changing social order of the postwar South. Transcripts of selected Reconstruction-era letters are available in the extended description of this lot. Further letters related to Wilson, his service, and his extended family are being sold in this auction as lots 47110, 47140, and 47141.

The archive also includes numerous photographs, notebooks, journals, store inventories, a pair of binoculars, and even a lock of hair belonging to the family members, giving an exceptionally full view of life in the Victorian American South. Of particular note is a beautiful 1/6th plate ambrotype of Wilson in uniform with gilt detailing, housed in its original case.

Captain Wilson was born, reared, educated, married, and died in Chester County, South Carolina. He entered South Carolina College in 1838 and graduated in 1841, opening a law practice in Chester. With his father aging, however, he soon dropped this practice to focus his attention on the family's plantation along Rocky Creek, where upwards of sixty people were enslaved to tend to the crops, home, and property. He served in the South Carolina State Legislature from 1855 to 1861 and was present when the state's Secession Convention voted to withdraw from the Union.

His earliest letters, dated 1855 to 1859, find him discussing his work in the state legislature as the tensions between the North and South mounted toward war. In a particularly striking letter from Columbia, dated December 15, 1859, he writes of the legislature's session convened to discuss John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry:

"We commenced the night Sessions on last night, and were in Session until 11 o'clock, discussing Federal relations, but come to no conclusion as to what should be the position of South Carolina in the present crisis, in relation to the late raid of John Brown & Co. at Harpers Ferry, and the present distracted condition of the House of Representatives in the Federal Legislature. We spent the evening in lengthy, fiery declaration..."

Brown's actions had sent the already tense nation into a frenzy over the increasingly controversial practice of slavery in the South. It was suddenly made clear that the issue would not simply resolve itself; Wilson, a proponent of slavery, was reminded of the similar secession crisis of 1851, in which South Carolina nearly left the Union in the aftermath of the Mexican War. He concludes his letter with a strong secessionist statement:

"I hope and trust that the Legislature may adopt something tangible, practicable, fine, and dignified, and assume a position in character with a firm, Brave, and patriotic people. A position which the State may not only assume, but stand by under any emergency. And not, as in 1851, take a position and in the next year recede from it."

The following year, with the possibility of war looming over the nation and Lincoln's election looking ever more likely, Wilson penned a draft of an article for the Chester Standard, further expressing his opinions on the matter. He urges the South to unite to defend itself, but remains optimistic that war and secession are unnecessary:

"I am no disunionist. I have always regarded a dissolution of the union as the greatest calamity that could befall us as a great nation...we have been forced to the conclusion that the time has come when the Southern people should begin in earnest to prepare for self-defense and self-protection...I do not think that upon a dissolution of the union that war is at all necessary. It is possible that not a single drop of blood will be shed, should the whole South, or at least the Cotton States, be united in the struggle."

Of course, Wilson's optimism was unrealistic; when South Carolina voted to secede following Lincon's election in 1860, war became an inevitability. Early in the summer of 1861, he gathered and organized a company of cavalry, personally furnishing horses and equipment for several of the men. He was commissioned first lieutenant of the "Chester Troop," later Co. D, 1st South Carolina Cavalry, and served under the command of his friend Captain William A. Walker.

His Civil War-date correspondence begins on September 12, 1861, as the regiment trained at Camp Johnson just north of Columbia. In his letters, he spares no detail in describing camp life and the organization of the Confederate Army, even regularly discussing the slaves who cooked, cleaned, and delivered goods for the troops. Wilson himself travelled with an enslaved man named Bill Harris, whose photograph is included with this archive. In a letter dated September 14, 1861, Wilson mentions that "Bill is doing finely," and that he and "Alex Walker's boy...do the cooking, table, and chamber, and parlor service," for the men.

The 1st South Carolina Cavalry trained through the end of 1861, then spent much of 1862 on duty in South Carolina, serving as the state's defense force as the Union advanced further south. Wilson continued to write letters home, sending updates on what he had heard of the war's battles, such as Shiloh in April 1862, and writing of his fellow soldiers' injuries, illnesses, and various camp controversies.

In the final days of 1862, Wilson was called to Fredericksburg to testify as a witness in a Court Martial. The Battle of Fredericksburg had taken place on December 11-15, 1862, and he had fought in some of the skirmishing that followed in the battle's devastating wake. He writes on January 2, 1863, recounting his experience:

"I was at Fredericksburg four days...One of the days was spent in viewing the late Battle ground. The ravages of war there are awful to behold...This is the worst repulse the enemy have had met with yet, and our Generals were not aware of what a victory they had gained for some days after the fight...Stuart had three Brigades of Cavalry numbering about 3,000 men and eight pieces of artillery. They had two little fights and took some wagons & teams and about 200 prisoners. Killed several of the enemy and lost but two men..."

The following summer was a brutal one for Wilson's regiment. On June 9, 1863, the regiment saw their first major combat since Fredericksburg at the Battle of Brandy Station. The battle seemed to be a resounding victory for the Confederates. On June 16, Wilson writes an account of the battle's casualties:

"Our loss was not so much as was thought to be at the time I wrote you. 500 will cover our loss in killed and wounded and missing. The enemy admit a loss of double that amount. We had to fight against odds, they having one Brigade of Infantry engaged, whilst our Cavalry alone was engaged, numbering about eight thousand, they having 15 or 20 thousand."

On July 17, however, he writes home again in the aftermath of the Battle of Gettysburg, where the Confederates had suffered more than 23,000 casualties, with additional heavy losses in the relentless skirmishes and ambushes in the surrounding days. His letter, tense with exhaustion, reads:

"We have had a hard time of it from the time we left Brandy Station. We have been in some eleven or twelve battles since that time, most of them skirmishes. Some four of five of them severe engagements, in all of which I have been engaged and come through unhurt. My horse at Gettysburg was wounded in four places, all of them slight...In this fight, Maj. Walker & Genl. Hampton were wounded, the former shot through the calf of the leg. The latter seriously shot below the haunch bone and cut with the saber on the head and on one arm. His being disabled is a serious loss to his Brigade. I had only 13 men of my Company with me in this fight...The only loss in my Company was Serg. Janell, who I fear was killed in a charge we made on a battery of the enemy, and failed to take it. We recovered his horse, and he may have been taken prisoner. There are two marks of balls on his saddle and a saber cut on his horse's head."

Shortly afterward, Wilson fell ill with typhoid dysentery and was admitted to Midway Hospital in Charlottesville, Virginia. He continued writing home diligently during his long stay of several weeks. On August 23, 1863, he wrote a lengthy letter to his brother, describing the Battle of Upperville, the terrible conditions of the army, and skirmishing with Hampton's Brigade near Brandy Station:

"We had a severe fight, Andrew Hood and others killed, besides about a half of one of the Companies in our Regt. capt'd...Since our arrival back, Hampton's Brigade near Brandy Station had one very hard day's fighting with five Brigades of Cavalry and one Division of Infantry of the enemy. This was as hard a fight as we have ever had...Why Genl. Stuart fought this one Brigade all day, withholding assistance until late in the evening, being driven back on our Infantry picket, they came in and helped us to drive the enemy back, is unaccountable were it any other Genl. than Stuart..."

After his illness, Wilson returned to South Carolina where he remained through the remainder of the war, writing of his recovery and his duty at Florence Stockade, a prisoner of war camp. In one letter dated October 11, 1864, he writes that "Yankees" are being killed by "these cool mornings...very rapidly. From 50 to 60 are buried per day now." Between September 1864 and April 1865, more than 2,800 prisoners of war perished at Florence Stockade.

Accompanying the correspondence in the archive are numerous relics belonging to the Wilson family. A brief inventory is as follows:

One pair of Civil War-era binoculars engraved "Walter Ballard Optical Co. in Atlanta" and "Lemaire Fab in Paris"; two pocketbooks belonging to John S. Wilson, circa 1864-1865; a lock of hair from John S. Wilson's daughter, Sallie, sent with a letter dated June 17, 1862; four notebooks containing store inventories circa 1848; John S. Wilson's "Exchange Bank" account book, circa 1891; J. B. Rosborough's memo book, circa 1891; two school notebooks owned by C. Scott Wilson while he attended South Carolina College (now the University of South Carolina), circa 1858; two autograph albums owned by Martha M. Moffatt, one with only three entries and one with numerous entries from her friends and family, circa 1847-1848; three 1/6th plate daguerreotypes, in cases, depicting David Wilson, Robert Wilson, and Sarah D. Wilson; one 1/6th ambrotype of John S. Wilson in uniform, in a case; one photograph of Bill Harris, a Black man enslaved by John S. Wilson; one carte de visite of D. H. Wilson in uniform; one cabinet card of Judge J. D. Wilson and his grandchildren; and one cabinet card of John S. Wilson's wife, Jane Rosborough Wilson.

*Note: The description previously stated that there was a 1/6th tintype of Captain John Simonton Wilson included. It has been corrected to state that it is a 1/6th ambrotype.

Condition: Generally very good, with expected toning, mailing folds, and minor wear. Some letters written in pencil but remain very legible. Occasional separations, staining, and minor loss present, generally not affecting legibility. Wear to journals, pocketbooks, and other ephemera; photos with some toning or tarnishing. Binoculars with minor wear to the lenses, but still perfectly functional with clear optics; moderate wear to case.

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