ARCHIVE OF LETTERS AND MANUSCRIPTS Relating to Cable's book KINCAID'S BATTERY

Northampton, MA, 1902 - 1903. Letters and Manuscripts. Some tears and wrinkles; two letters are laid down on cardboard. Very Good condition overall. Superb collection of material by this former Confederate soldier and important, neglected writer who paved the way for modern Southern writers such as Faulkner and Welty in dealing with the pervasive issue of race. Includes 9 AUTOGRAPH LETTERS SIGNED (ALSs) to Confederate officer Alexander Porter Morse; 1 AUTOGRAPH LETTER SIGNED (ALS) to publisher Charles Scribner; 2 AUTOGRAPH MANUSCRIPTS SIGNED (AMSs) addressed to Morse's children; and 2 TYPED LETTERS, unsigned, from Morse to Cable; along with 5 envelopes (truncated) addressed in Cable's hand. The letters mostly concern Cable's work and his interest in Morse's experiences in the Civil War. The letter from Cable to Scribner is one of introduction for Morse. Some excerpts: "I have begun another cavalry story of New Orleans and Vicksburg, and I want to sit you down in my library and make you talk. Oh dear! how can I wait? And I must see that book of Howell Carter [A CAVALRYMAN'S REMINISCENCES OF THE CIVIL WAR]." "I thank you for the little sketch and picture of General Pickett, which I return with this letter. Gettysburg would be quite too much out of focus for my story." "I am today expressing your invaluable diary back to you. It has given me many a good point and I wish I might see it again when I get deeper into the actual writing of my story -- the final writing, I mean.... I hope you will like 'Strong Hearts.'" "I have your letter of the 17 and am enjoying the manual of Artillery Tactics greatly. It delights me that I have chosen my hero from this so highly scientific arm of the services, an arm which has been so oddly overlooked by the story-tellers." "I am delighted with 'The Cannoneer' [Augustus Caesar Buell: THE CANNONEER: RECOLLECTIONS OF SERVICE IN THE ARMY OF THE POTOMAC]. It gives me points already though I have just received it and have not looked into it more than four pages deep.... I wish you could see how I have changed to opening of my story. I have it right this time, and this again I owe, in degree, to you -- to your patient and interested attention to my reading of the first draft." Included in this archive are the first two pages of that first draft which differ greatly from the published version, both written in a very small hand and INSCRIBED and SIGNED by Cable at the bottom of each page, both apparently to the son and daughter of Morse who are described by Morse in his letters to Cable as fiercely competing to read a copy of Cable's THE CAVALIER that was in the Morse home. KINCAID'S BATTERY, about a Confederate army artillery unit set in New Orleans, was not published until 1908.

Alexander Porter Morse received notoriety during the Civil War as a prisoner of war on the "Maple Leaf," a civilian steamboat chartered by the Union Army to transport prisoners north. The Confederate prisoners overtook the crew of the vessel in June 1863 along with Union soldiers and officers on board. Seventy-one of the nearly 100 Confederate prisoners, including nineteen-year-old Lt. Morse, managed to escape off the steamboat, ultimately making it safely to Richmond. After the war, Morse relocated to Washington, DC to become a journalist and correspondent, eventually earning a PhD from Princeton University in 1885. He was the author of several law books and represented Judge Howard Ferguson in the famous Plessy v. Ferguson case. (Inventory #: 020615)