Talk about rare!  There is only one other known letter from Camp Lawton according to the book, Prisoners’ Mail From The American Civil War, by Galen D. Harrison.  The other known letter (we will copy the entire description from Harrison’s book for you to read) is from a prisoner dated November 14th, 1864. 

OUR LETTER WAS WRITTEN IN OCTOBER 1864 WHEN THE PRISON FIRST OPENED. 
THIS LETTER PROVIDES DETAILS AND FACTS THAT WERE NOT PREVIOUSLY KNOWN. 
BEING A GUARD’S LETTER IT IS ALSO THREE TIMES LONGER
THAN WHAT A PRISONER COULD WRITE.

Camp Lawton near Millen

October the 27th, 1864

Dear Son & Daughter,

                                It is with pleasure that I embrace this opportunity of writing you a few lines which will inform you that I am well at this time and hope that these few lines will find you both and Gaby well and a doing well.  I have nothing of interest to write at this time.  I wrote you a few lines the other day but I have nothing else to do now.  I will tell you that we have moved to this place.  It is a new place on the Augusta road four miles from Millen.  Millen is on the central road.  This in a new place, the stockade has forty acres of land in it.  This is a flat pine woods country and I don’t think that it is a very healthy country, the chill and fever is here.  We have tolerable hard times here now.  Provision is scarce we get meal a plenty we get one pound of beef to the man for one days rations every other day and the next day about one half pint or a little more of green syrup for a man and some peas that the weevils has eaten almost up.  Now that is the amount of our living here though I make out very well on that but I can’t eat a bite of the syrup.   You wrote me you was going to Augusta.  I would be glad that you could stop and see me.  Our camp is in sight of the road.  I saw small potatoes and peach pies sell here today for $2.25 a piece and chickens for $4.00 a piece and turkeys for $9.00, sweet potatoes for $16.00 per bushel and everything else in proportion.  I received a letter from home yesterday dated the 16th which stated that they was all well and a doing well but I still am uneasy because I hear frequently that everything in the country up there is being pressed but they don’t write to me any time about it.  Mrs. Astin writes to Robert that her stuff is all destroyed.  I am in hopes that none of ours is.  Your Ma sent me a jar of preserves and a loaf bread by John Patman but I never got them.  I was gone from Andersonville when Patman came back from home and he never sent it to me.  It would have been a great treat to me at this time but I am doing tolerable well.  All that I am afraid of is that my folks at home will suffer if their stuff is taken away from them and from the news that I frequently hear from our country I am afraid that they don’t tell me the worst that is going on up there.  You must write soon as you get this for it is all the satisfaction that I get to have and am glad to hear that you are not smoking the pipe.  I am a great slave to that now.  I only smoke once a day and that is from the time that I get up until I lie down and I think that I fatten on it for I weigh 150 pounds now.  So I will close as I have nothing of interest to write on that would interest you.  You will direct your letter Camp Lawton near Millen, Brown County, Georgia. I don’t know when I will get to come home but I believe that I will come some day.  So I will close by sending you all my best love.  H. V. Harris.

To: J. J. West & Family.

Our letter is four pages, written in ink on brown Confederate paper.  As you can see from the photos, there is some paper loss at the edges with a loss of a few words, but we have been able to transcribe it all.  

For the P.O.W. or Georgia collector, this is a once in a lifetime opportunity to own THE ONLY LETTER THAT ACTUALLY DESCRIBES THE PRISON, AND ONE OF ONLY TWO KNOWN!

#PO45 - Price $1,495