Scope and Contents Folder two contains letters and documents from 1860 including reports from officers stationed in forts in and around Charleston harbor (SC). The primary subjects of correspondence include military preparedness, general defenses, and vulnerabilities of the various forts. Some documents show early Confederate preparations for attacking Fort Sumter, which at that point remained in possession of the United States. This folder also includes applications for the South Carolina state militia from...

Scope and Contents Folder five contains documents and correspondence from March 1861. Included is another letter concerning an enslaved man, Arthur or Thomas Lynch [see folders three and four]; a detailed letter to South Carolina’s governor Francis Pickens from Lucius Quinton Washington, a distant relative of George Washington, from Washington DC on the national political situation in the wake of President Abraham Lincoln’s inaugural speech and including strategy and intelligence on Fort Sumter and Pensacola...