"You of the North, are accustomed to view the institution of Slavery as a great moral evil [and] all that H.B. Stowe humbug...[Stowe] has taken the exception [and] made it the rule...Civil War...must be the result of further Northern interference."

Autograph letter signed by R.A. Upton, to his sister Rebecca. New River, Missouri, 21 December 1853. 4 pages, 4to.

Upton, a Missouri pioneer, writes home to his sister with news of living in the country and his ill health: "I have been a damn invalid - first with cholera, + then with bilious diarrhea, from both which diseases, I am now convalescing." Despite criticisms of his current home, he urges that his sister and her fiancé visit him, though he recalls that "Mr. A more than half promised me in 1848 that he would visit me long ere this when he would come out here where 'huge snakes,' 'alligators', sugar manufactories + N-----s' + why not now? You + he - say why not."

Most of the letter, however, is devoted to his unfiltered thoughts about slavery, divisions between the North & South, and the famous anti-slavery book "Uncle Tom's Cabin." Recently published by author Harriet Beecher Stowe, Upton discusses the book, accurately predicting Civil War: "You of the North, are accustomed to view the institution of Slavery as a great moral evil + all that H.B. Stowe humbug. We of the South, [are] accustomed to look upon it as a great social curse. This is the true view to take of it too. Mrs. Stowe's Book is a great book, + unanswerable for this. She has taken the exception + made it the rule + here is a complete answer to the whole work. Let the North let the institution alone + it will in the course of less than half a century, work out its own end, then run its full course. But if not, then the end, may be earlier, the chances are that it will be later, but Civil War, the distinction of this Union, the liberty of our country, the institutions of the land, with anarchy + terrible confusion must be the result of further Northern interference. But hang the Slavery question, I am not going to discuss it with you, + am not going to defend it all - though perhaps it is defensible - but I know the curse + so far as I or mine are concerned, I only wish we might sell out. But nothing is more humbuffoonical than this eternal vaporing about Slavery + the poor slave. Poor slave! Poor devil! Poor incarnation of Diabelim(?). What a topsy!"

Upton continues the letter with a racist tirade filled with pseudoscience. Despite the difficult nature of the content, the letter is indicative of the views of many in the South, especially in the contentious Missouri territory. Especially fascinating as the Kansas-Nebraska Act would be passed a few months after this letter, sparking the Bleeding Kansas crisis nearby.

[Manuscripts, Letters, Documents, Ephemera, Missouri Territory, Bleeding Kansas, Slavery, Enslavement, Abolition, Emancipation, African Americana, African American History, Black History]