Title: Autograph letter, signed from a Virginia slave owner on Negro "insurrection" and "insubordination"
Author: Burwell, H.B.
Description: 4 pp.To “my dear Thomas”, asking for a shipment of Lynnhaven Oysters, discussing his health and plantation problems: “...Insurrection has all got out of the Negroes if any there was…" one fact about which you seemed disposed to ridicule me"…that I thought I discovered strong evidence, in the conduct of my Negroes, of insubordination. Now, if you have read the Papers, you have no doubt seen that such was the case in nearly every portion of our state ‘about that time’. I have been forcibly struck with the sagacity I possess in detecting an insubordinate disposition on the part of a Negro. Without the least shadow of legal evidence to convict, I thought I saw the impulse and from the newspapers I see that it was a general thing, showing plainly that I was not mistaken…” John Armistead Burwell (1813-1857) was a prosperous Tobacco farmer on the Virginia-North Carolina border. He and his wife owned 15 slaves to work in the fields and as house servants. While the family enjoyed some luxuries – a carriage, fashionable dresses for the women, oysters and brandy - Burwell himself was more prideful than wealthy, “hot-tempered as well as arrogant”. He died the same year he wrote this letter – after his wife left him, taking her 3 daughters, and accusing her husband of violent behavior. It can only be imagined how he treated his “insurbordinate” slaves - even if they did not join in the Negro revolts that were brutally suppressed throughout the South in 1856.
Heading: Place Published: [Mecklenburg County, Virginia]
Publisher:
Date Published: January 12, 1857

Tiny closed tears at letter edges; very good.