Series: 8 VV (Volume 8)
Scope and Content Note: Draper's correspondence, notes, transcripts, and newspaper clippings on Sumter's life from 1783 to 1832, with emphasis on his senatorial career (1801-1810). Included are newspaper accounts about the condition of the southern Loyalists in the 1780s, copies of a few letters by Sumter including one to George Washington (1791) and one to a states rights and free trade convention (1830), discussion of his attitude toward nullification, copies and quotations from his speeches, and references to portraits of him. Several letters contain reminiscences obtained orally from two Sumter family black servants: “Aunt Polly;” and Edmund Bears, son of “Soldier Tom,” an African-born slave who accompanied Sumter during several military engagements. There are also notes on the unsuccessful claim of the heirs of Abraham Tipton for compensation for his military service. Countless brief references to numerous associates of Sumter and to Sumter family genealogy occur throughout this volume.