Details For Cover ID# 29491

Patriotic cover and lettersheet used by a Corporal in the 44th Ohio Volunteer Infantry, John A. McKee, serving in Tennessee, entered the mails with blue Nashville, TN postmark of "March 31 1862" shortly after the post office mails to the north were re-established.

Great content about escaped slaves passing through the picket lines includes: .. & the result was that five contrabands (escaped slaves fleeing north) came and gave themselves up to us asking no other boon than the privilege of getting on the other side of our pickets (away) from their  masters or employers. ..... One colored man who gave himself up to
us on picket said his wife lived 15 miles in off from where he lived when he married her & had not seen her & his two children for two months & his master has assured him he should never see her again while at the same time advising him to take another wife. His running off was the result. The people here boast of their kindness to their slaves and they are generally well fed and clothed and not overworked even this far south, but what cruelty can be greater than that a man’s wife should be sold from him, his children sold from him and all deprived of the rudiments of an education and the freedom of thought that is so essential to the knowledge of our relative duties to God and man, and of the way of salvation.

see pdf file with full content and background information:
https://www.rfrajola.com/2K22/705.pdf