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First Round to Preservation!
State opens fire in battle for Civil War documents
Archivists say state documents left Columbia on Feb. 16, 1865, a day before the city burned. The history is murky, but somehow Gen. Evander Law gained possession of the papers.
BY BRIAN HICKS
Of The Post and Courier Staff
On the eve of an auction for more than 400 Civil War-era letters and documents, the state of South Carolina has stormed in to stop the bidding -- and has claimed the entire lot.
State Attorney General Henry McMaster on Friday slapped a temporary restraining order on a Columbia auction house and Charleston attorney Kenneth Krawcheck to halt the sale of 444 letters and documents dating back to wartime South Carolina.
The papers include letters to two governors and various military leaders, and three handwritten dispatches from Robert E. Lee.
"Our view is that these documents belong to the people of South Carolina," McMaster said. "We don't believe there is a statute of limitations on something involving title. Common law says documents generated by the government or to the government are official state documents."
The letters were slated to be auctioned at 1 p.m. today at Bill Mishoe's Auction House and Estate Services. Late Friday, Mishoe posted the auction's cancellation notice on his Web site, even though dozens of potential buyers were already en route to South Carolina.
Krawcheck, who represents the anonymous Charleston-area owner of the letters, said his client will fight the state in court and expects to win.
"I was at the State Archives letting them microfilm all of the documents (Thursday), and there was not the slightest hint of a problem," Krawcheck said.
"We're very disturbed by this last-minute action by the state. My client is going to suffer a severe financial hardship from this auction being called off. They've known about this for at least 10 days, and at no point has the attorney general's office or the Archives contacted me to ask about ownership or our position on it."McMaster said his office took an interest in the case after a letter from Rodger E. Stroup, director of the South Carolina Archives and History Center. Stroup wrote that his research staff believes the documents are the gubernatorial papers of Francis W. Pickens and Milledge L. Bonham, South Carolina's two wartime governors.
"If you believe we have a legitimate claim to the records, we would request your assistance in pursuing that action," Stroup wrote on July 30.
McMaster said his office filed the restraining order, injunction and lawsuit at the last minute to make sure the documents didn't disappear and that the Archives at least got photocopies of them. After the suit was filed, the owners could have blocked copying.
"We thought it was important that the Archives be allowed to make their copies without interference," McMaster said.
Now, both sides predict a monumental legal battle over personal property rights vs. the state's rights.
This case has its roots in the final days of the Civil War, when Gen. William T. Sherman marched into the state and Columbia burned.
During the confusion, this crate of letters, documents and notes left the state Capitol and, for whatever reason, did not return for more than 100 years.
CHAOS IN COLUMBIA
At the center of this historical mystery is Evander McIver Law. A native of Darlington, Law came to Charleston to attend The Citadel, graduating in 1856. Later, he served as a military instructor there.
When fighting broke out in 1861, Law raised a company and charged into Pensacola, site of some of the Civil War's early battles. Later, he started an Alabama infantry regiment that saw action in every corner of the South.
Law was a well-respected military man, and a controversial one, too, having his share of disagreements with other ranking Confederate officers, including James Longstreet and Brig. Gen. Micah Jenkins.
Still, he moved up through the ranks at a brisk pace. Law saw action in some of the war's most horrendous battles: Second Bull Run, Antietam and Gettysburg. In 1864, Law, a general by then, was injured at the battle of Cold Harbor. Later, he said it was at the battlefield on which he was wounded that the full horror of war sank in.
"I had seen the carnage in front of Marye's hill at Fredricksburg, and on the 'old railroad cut' which Jackson's men held at the Second Manassas; but I had seen nothing to exceed this," Law said. "It was not war; it was murder."
Law returned to action in the last year of the war, and it is here that he evidently came into possession of the letters. State archivists say Law was at least partially in charge of the evacuation of Columbia.
Walter Edgar, a University of South Carolina professor and author of "South Carolina: A History," said the state capital in the days leading up to Sherman's invasion was chaos, a scene reminiscent of the exodus from Atlanta in "Gone With the Wind." During that time, the letters and documents were removed from the Capitol.
Archivists say a cache of state documents left the city by rail on Feb. 16, 1865, a day before the burning of Columbia. Originally headed for Charlotte, the train instead stopped in Chester. After that, archivists say, history gets "murky."
"The destruction of the railroad between Columbia and Winnsboro made the return of the state archives to Columbia difficult," Stroup wrote in his July 30 letter to McMaster. "The records of the state were still stored in the Chester Court House as late as December 1865. The breakdown of civil authority left them easy prey to theft."
Archivists have been careful not to brand Law a thief, allowing that he may have been rescuing the letters. Edgar says, "We owe a debt of gratitude to the family that has safeguarded the letters through the years."
Krawcheck confirms that the current owner of the letters is a descendant of Law, but that his possession of the letters "would not or could not have been illegal."
Law, the longest-living Confederate general, has a barracks named for him at The Citadel. He held the letters until his death in 1920, and Krawcheck said, "He obviously thought he was supposed to have them."
"No one knows how Gen. Law obtained the papers and I doubt they ever will," Krawcheck says. "But to suggest he may have done something wrong is kind of beyond belief."
LETTERS FROM LEE
The letters have drawn much attention since the auction was publicized last week, particularly because of the Lee papers.
There are three detailed letters from Lee, at least two of which are to S.C. Gov. Pickens concerning troop sizes. Lee mentions Wadmalaw Island in one, basically saying the Confederates are outnumbered.
"The enemy is making demonstrations against Wadmalaw Island, and our force there is not strong enough to resist him," Lee wrote.
Mishoe said he had interested bidders coming from several states and no way to stop their travel plans. The letters, estimated to be worth $2.4 million, would have fetched the auction house a healthy commission.
"I'm laughing, but I don't feel like laughing," Mishoe said shortly after he was served with a temporary restraining order. "I wish if they were going to do this, they would have done it last week."
The first hearing in this court battle is expected sometime in the next 10 days, and both sides say they are ready. McMaster says his office is only acting in the public and historical interest, filling in a gap in South Carolina and Civil War history. If the letters are separated and sold off to hundreds of different buyers, the attorney general argues, they could be lost forever.
"Our position is that these documents are priceless in terms of historical values," McMaster said. "We believe the law supports that position."
Edgar says there is a precedent for the attorney general's move. Nearly 20 years ago, the General Assembly declared all old state documents the property of the state, confiscating scores of historical documents from the South Carolina Historical Society in Charleston and the South Caroliniana Library at USC. At the time, Edgar says, they called it "repatriating."
Krawcheck says this case hinges on possession, particularly because the documents date to a time that transactions often weren't recorded. He also said the state had a chance to get the letters earlier: The documents were offered to several historical institutions.
"My client has owned these documents since the Civil War," Krawcheck says, "and there is no hint they were obtained illegally or improperly. Unless you can show he did something illegal, they can't say how this happened."
Contact Brian Hicks at 937-5561 or bhicks@postandcourier.com.
It seems to me that Mr. Krawcheck just doesn't get it??
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