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At the Institute’s core is the Gilder Lehrman Collection, one of the great archives in American history. More than 85,000 items cover five hundred years of American history, from Columbus’s 1493 letter describing the New World through the end of the twentieth century.

Shifflet, Hillary, 1823-1863 to Jemima Shifflet

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Gilder Lehrman Collection #: GLC02174.08 Author/Creator: Shifflet, Hillary, 1823-1863 Place Written: Cap Sill, Tennessee Type: Autograph letter signed Date: February 13, 1863 Pagination: 3 p. : Height: 20.4 cm, Width: 12.4 cm Order a Copy

Shifflet went out with a forage team today and they are "as tired as I am of the war." He declares that "this onholy war wood a bin over if oald Lincoln wood a let the negros alone I wish he had forty the blackest negroes in the South tide to him." He describes his shock at how the soldiers steal from local farmers and was especially upset when it happened to a "poor widow woman with fore little children…she beg[ged] them to not take her things for her little children wood starve if tha took her provishion but tha went ahead and took."

Shifflet, Hillory, 1823-1863
Shifflet, Jemima Cox, 1822-1881
Lincoln, Abraham, 1809-1865

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