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[Identification of item], Joseph Starke Sims papers, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University.
The Joseph Starke Sims papers were received by the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library as a gift in 1978-1991. This collection forms part of the Harry L. and Mary K. Dalton Collection, 1695-1955 and undated.
Processed by Rubenstein Library staff
Encoded by Kimberly Sims, March 2011
Descriptive sources and standards used to create this inventory:
This finding aid is NCEAD compliant.
Joseph Starke Sims was a Civil War Confederate officer, cotton grower, and South Carolina senator.
Correspondence, financial records, legal documents, clippings, account books, commissions, addresses and speeches, and a diploma. Correspondence concerns chiefly cotton growing, trade and prices; slaves who worked in cotton fields; financial matters; Washington, D.C. politics, with references to Henry Clay and John Calhoun; state and national politics; descriptions of newly settled areas of Mississippi and California; and a cholera outbreak in Charleston (1832). Civil War letters detail problems at Fort Sumter (1861), and often refer to economic difficulties and shortages in South Carolina. Other Civil War letters are also written from Manassas, Alabama, and Mississippi. One letter from Mississippi details the desperation of women left alone and unable to flee before the advancing Union Army. Post-war letters reveal the problems of Reconstruction in South Carolina. Many of the letters are to Sims' wife Jane Emily Sims (Farnandis).
Includes an autobiographical letter from J. K. Paulding, author and statesman, and an essay by the same, entitled "The history of Uncle Sam and his boys." Some of Sims' addresses and one of the legal documents concern Nullification, which Sims' strongly supported. Other documents include an obituary for Franklin H. Elmore, plantation and general account books, and some material on Sims' student days at South Carolina College (ca. 1817-1819), which includes a letter to his brother in 1819 "in defence of General Jackson," and his "treatment of the Indians."
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