Raynors HCA 2016-10
This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 10/21/2016
A scarce, lengthy, and eloquent missive from a noted chaplain of a distinguished black unit. Storrow Higginson, a Harvard-educated poet and writer who rubbed elbows with the Transcendentalists, writes a friend who has not yet embraced Emancipation hoping to bring him along. Autograph Letter Signed, “Storrow Higginson” to [Clifford]. No date but evidently early Jan. 1865. On U.S. Christian Commission lettersheets, 8 pp., 4¾ x 8 in. In part, “Pray do not let a thousand cares of domestic life or housekeeping wear upon you. I know how fatal to all peace of mind are these Considerations of personal comfort, and were I in a city should prefer a restaurant to dining alone; dreary as this ‘bully thing’ always is. ... How beautiful—as you suggest—become our Earthly relations, when friendship is dependent not upon regular Correspondence or ‘fulfilled duty’ but when a lovely trust fills all spaces and bridges all silence. And soul is bound to soul in a simple truth never to be shaken. We are fortunate Cliff to have arrived at these relations—to me the purest and surest on Earth. ... And I who have struggled so long in vain that she who bore me might have confidence in my Aims and life—whose love is more than all others love though it be less than these, joyfully accept a banishment in God’s Service ... Our paths—so far as the humanitarian question goes—are too divergent at present to admit of mutual sympathy in the direction of Emancipation—would they could meet! but as I believe fidelity to what is highest in us should be the rule of action, not opinions of others. ... This life is killing me slowly but I cannot murmur when I think how sublime is the opportunity that has fallen to our generation, and if others so cheerfully give the dearest gifts of Earth in the defense of an idea they neither understand nor dare to confess! I can gladly offer health and self for a definite object, Emancipation (for this is the idea of the war to me). But this brings me to a point in the road when you lay aside your staff and say, ‘I go no further. It is dark. I cannot see the way. ...” Samuel Storrow Higginson (1842-1907) was the nephew of minister, editor, literary critic author, soldier, and militant abolitionist Thomas Wentworth Higginson. Storrow shared many traits with his uncle: he was also an abolitionist, minister, led a regiment of black troops during the Civil War, and eventually pursued literary and publishing opportunities. Storrow Higginson attended Franklin Sanborn’s Concord Academy and later graduated from Harvard in 1863 and then served in the office of the Supervisory Committee for Recruiting Colored Regiments, in Philadelphia. He was elected regimental chaplain of the 9th Colored Troops, and had earlier served as an Army instructor of blacks. By April 3, 1865, his unit was occupying Richmond, and then traveled through Texas until October 1866.
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