ALS signed "W. C. Bryant," two pages on two adjoining sheets, 5 x 8, July 27, 1863. Handwritten letter to a gentleman, in part: "I think the position taken by the Evening Journal that North Carolina ought to be readmitted into the Union 'with Slavery' should be noticed. This cannot be done without a violation of all laws human and divine. There is not a slave now in North Carolina-such is the effect of the proclamation as if she comes back to the Union it would be without a slave in all her borders. Reenslavement would be a usurpation which we cannot permit…having taken the black race under our protection. Besides if North Carolina is allowed to retain the institution of slavery, so must all the other states. We cannot make a distinction. If we restore slavery in North Carolina, we must do it in Louisiana, where the slaveholders are already accommodating themselves to the new order of thought, and paying the negroes wages as free laborers. This great reform will be fatally checked wherever it had been begun." Professionally inlaid into a larger sheet and in fine condition. A fascinating letter by the abolitionist poet on the rights of man and the effects of President Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, issued on January 1, 1863.
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