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Item# 16532
Price: $350
“Hix Ferry Ark / Oct 27 [1861” all in manuscript with PAID / 5 (ms) on cover to Mrs. Mattie Slemon, Montecello, Drew Co, Arks, with manuscript directive at lower left “Via Nopolion Arks” (Napolean). ONLY TWO SUCH RECORDED HIX’S FERRY COVERS RECORDED in Dr. Bruce Roberts census, reduced at right and tiny repairs along bottom edge. CC Type A, CV $400. 2007 CSA Certificate. $350.
Colonel William Ferguson Slemons, 2nd Arkansas Cavalry, was born in Tennessee in 1830. He was a 31-year-old Monticello, Arkansas lawyer when he enlisted in July 1861. Letters to his wife, Mattie, reveal an educated man possessed of unusual powers of observation and a dry wit. Many are found online. On campaign in Kentucky in 1861, Slemons praises the state’s springs and caves, but notes the people are generally wealthy and seem to care but little for the cause of the south. In the autumn of 1862, he waggishly comments, on hearing of so many pregnant wives and ailing infants, that the men should engage in some other Sport. For nearly two years, Slemons served with Brigadier Gen. James R. Chalmers cavalry division in northern Mississippi and Tennessee. In the summer of 1864, in command of the brigade, Col. Slemons joined Gen. Sterling Price’s invasion of Missouri. Captured in October 1864, Slemons spent the winter of 1864 and spring of 1865 in prison camps at Johnson’s Island, Ohio, and Rock Island, Illinois. Once back in Arkansas, Slemons renewed his law practice, and served as a justice of the peace, judge, and three-term congressman. He died in Monticello, Arkansas in 1918. A wartime ambrotype of Col. Slemons in uniform, and a postwar ambrotype of an older Slemons in civilian clothes are both in the collection of The Museum of the Confederacy.