Item No. 1477686

In this January 1862 telegram, Confederate Colonel James Chesnut wires Brigadier General Maxcy Gregg regarding South Carolina cavalry reinforcements. Chesnut’s secretarially signed message reads:

Squadron Cavalry here waiting transportation. Will be sent as soon as practicable.
James Chesnut

The docket notes on the telegram’s reverse give a little more information, stating, “Squadron Cavalry waiting for transportation to come to Pocotaligo.” Pocotaligo was a stop on the vital Charleston and Savannah Railroad, and one which would become a target of raids later in 1862 as Union forces attempted to isolate Charleston.

The telegram appears on the pre-printed form of the Southern Telegraph Company, the Richmond-based company that handled the vast majority of Confederate telegraph communications during the war years. Very good with slight edge separation at the original fold, as well as light foxing, toning, and edge chipping. Measures about 8 5/8” x 5 1/2”.

Maxcy Gregg was a pre-war attorney and Fire-Eater secessionist who helped organize South Carolina’s forces in the early months of the war. By the summer of 1862, Gregg was in Virginia leading a brigade of South Carolinians in A. P. Hill’s Light Division. He fought at Gaines’ Mill and Second Manassas. At Antietam, he was wounded by the very same sharpshooter’s bullet that killed General Lawrence O’Bryan Branch. Three months later at the Battle of Fredericksburg, Gregg was mortally wounded and died two days later on December 15, 1862.

Another prominent South Carolinian, James Chesnut was a wealthy planter who served as US Senator from the state before resigning after Abraham Lincoln was elected in 1860. Chesnut served in a number of high-profile roles in the Confederate army, including positions on the staffs of General P. G. T. Beauregard and President Jefferson Davis. The insightful wartime diary kept by his wife, Mary Boykin Chesnut, was published in 1905.