Letter, 17 July 1861, from S.C. Governor F[rancis] W[ilkinson] Pickens to Gen. James Simons - Gifts to Manuscripts Division Announced 2005 (USCS) - South Caroliniana Library - University Libraries

Letter, 17 July 1861, from S.C. Governor
F.W. Pickens to Gen. James Simons
A gift to the SCL Manuscripts Division announced in 2005

Letter, 17 July 1861, from South Carolina governor F[rancis] W[ilkinson] Pickens (1805-1869) to Gen. James Simons (1813-1879) responds to Simons’ letter addressing discrepancies in Pickens’ earlier written communiques regarding Simons’ resignation. “The original papers are all in the Adjutant General’s office, or ought to be,” Pickens advises, “and you are at perfect liberty to take copies, and show this to the Acting Adjutant General Simonton, and let him note what papers you take copies of, and then, of course, have them all filed carefully, as they constitute a public record.”

Pickens urges that Simons read the letter to his staff, “because I desire they shall know that nothing I have ordered or directed was in the slightest degree offensive, or at least was not at all so intended by me.”

The letter, which is in a stenographer’s hand but bears Pickens’ signature, appears in print in Simons’ July 1861 pamphlet, Address to the Officers of the Fourth Brigade: Giving the Grounds of his Resignation.

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