This inked manuscript 8 page letter on unlined letter sheets, dated Raleigh May 8, 1866 was written in response to the Campobello Island Raid of April 1866 by the Irish American Fenian Brotherhood members led by John O’Mahony on the British province of New Brunswick at Campobello Island. This invasion was launched from the State of Maine, but a rapid British Army and Naval response, forced the invaders to melt away. Both General Grant and Meade were ordered by President Johnson to enforce the neutrality laws and stop Fenian supporters from operating in the border region, thus dooming these raids into Canada. The letter written by B.F. Morse of Raleigh, N.C. to his friend George B. Dyer, in Eastport, Maine who has been Provost Marshal in 1865 and early 1866 of Raleigh, at the close of the Civil War goes into great detail why he thought the Fenian’s were wrong to attempt to foment revolution in British controlled Ireland, with comparisons to the Southern effort at secession and Hungarian fights with Austria, the South American Spanish provinces revolts against Spain in the 1820’s and more. Gives his opinion that Ireland is better off under the control of Britain. The writer states ‘I was much please with the prompt and decisive course of conduct exhibited by Genl. Meade. If he, however, has any sympathies with the movement or the movers, we differ widely. I regard the present attempt of Irish men to foment a civil war in Ireland as wicked and unwise in the last degree. It has not even the excuse of the South, for its late attempt at separation.’ After four and a 3rd pages on the Fenians the writer turns to the conditions prevailing in the South at the time, and writes as follows: ‘I turn to our condition down South. We are very poor, very poor, in wealth. Still we have cause to thank Heaven, that we are not in want of food…Cotton abhors from fif-tes(?) of labor in all the South, where it can be grown. Still the crop will not in my opinion be over two millions of bales. In many localities the blacks work will and under systimater(?) management, when the owner of the farm conducts it, but they abhor the idea of being under white manager. They call him overseer, a name of detestable ap---- with them. I do not wonder at it. I should feel it myself, was I in their place…I fear the blacks will be at the end of the year greatly disappointed in their wages. Many take shares in the crops and prefer this mode of payment to moderate wages in money. They have calculated upon 40 or 50 cents for cotton, and they will not get the half of it. They will then be prepared to seek other employments, and probably be again disappointed… The letter ends with a short discourse on the joys of rod fishing.

Fine condition.