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To: docmcb; Lazamataz
Not to my knowledge. My gg grandmother gave them to my great aunt Jack, and she kept them in HER parlor until her death. At that time, the family donated them to Emory, and so far as I know nobody has taken the time to put them up on the net. Although he graduated from UGa in Civil Engineering (how 'bout them Dawgs?) Grandpa Long may have been the world's worst speller, and his handwriting is old fashioned of course (though neat) and the letters are difficult to read. As things got worse and worse for the Confederacy, the letters were written with bad ink, pencil, walnut juice, etc. on any old scrap of paper that came to hand (some are written on pages torn from a steamer's freight book - some of the better paper as a matter of fact.)

Laz, I think you have the rights of it. History's like everything else in life . . . you have some extremes but most folks are in the middle somewhere, among the shades of grey. I never knew my Grandpa Long but I knew his daughter in law, my great grandmother, very well (my great grandfather died very young of typhoid, leaving Nanny with two children and one on the way) and she always spoke very highly of him. Apparently he was a hard working rather close-fisted man (farmer and merchant) but very kind-hearted and shy. He told Nanny that he only once struck a slave - because he was "unmercifully beating a horse." I think that, to the extent he could be (given the times and the culture he grew up in) he was a humane master. (Had he not been, surely Bas would have "taken off" at one of any number of opportunities, e.g. on the way home from the war, or when the Yankees came through.)

38 posted on 07/02/2002 6:04:16 AM PDT by AnAmericanMother
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To: AnAmericanMother
"....folks are in the middle somewhere, among the shades of grey.

I like that....

44 posted on 07/02/2002 6:20:48 AM PDT by azhenfud
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