- (August 2007) COLUMBIA, S.C. - It's the stuff historians dream of - an unknown cache of documents that answer long-asked questions and open new avenues of scholarship. The South Carolina Confederate Relic Room and Military Museum recently acquired such a treasure trove.

Hundreds of documents reveal how the Confederate government financed its purchases, what it bought, from whom, how the goods got to the South, and more.

Museum Director Allen Roberson calls it "One of the greatest collections of primary source Civil War documents discovered in the last 100 years."

These missing links in the story of the Confederacy's supply and finance network were found in a Mobile, Ala., attic. The house had been the home of Kate McRae Shepard. Her grandmother was the sister of Colin J. McRae, the Confederate government's chief financial agent in Europe, and John J. McRae, a prominent Mississippi politician.

Historians Corky Huey of Columbia and Dean Thomas of Gettysburg were the first experts to examine the documents. Huey says, "I can't explain the quantity and quality of material." The men expected to see stuffed shoeboxes, not dozens of cartons. "In 15 minutes we were overwhelmed and it only got better," he recalls.

Through Oct. 5 the museum is exhibiting some of the documents with examples of foreign equipment they describe that was purchased by the Confederacy. A major exhibit based on the McRae Papers that is planned for the sesquicentennial in 2011 will travel to other museums.

Wendy and William James bought the Shepard house, an 1897 Queen Anne Victorian built by C.M. Shepard, in 2002 when they decided to return to the South and family and operate a bed and breakfast. They found the National Register house, where Kate Shepard had run a school, and asked that everything connected with her be left. Some of those items are now displayed.

Nine months after they moved in, a Shepard relative visited the Kate Shepard House Bed & Breakfast and asked to show her family around. "We invited them in and ended up in the attic," Wendy James says. "It wasn't until then that we looked down into one of these boxes to see what was in them."

She describes dozens of boxes piled high, filled with more than 3,000 family papers, some predating the war, and Colin McRae's records as financial agent. They weren't organized or archived. When the Jameses found Confederate documents they sought out collectors and the word spread quickly.

Huey says it was apparent to him and Dean Thomas that the documents needed to be maintained in a collection rather than be sold separately and lost to historians and researchers. The men spent two years working on finding an institution to take the collection, which, in the meantime, was moved to a bank vault.

The McRae Papers were appraised for $304,085 and sold for $250,000. The South Carolina Confederate Relic Room and Military Museum has raised $110,000 since November and has a year to pay the balance. Donations are invited.

More than 800 documents related to the Confederacy have been inventoried, but not looked at in detail. Roberson says most are in extremely good condition. He thinks it will take a year to process them and make them available to researchers. The museum hopes to put them on CDs.

He anticipates new scholarship and books about dealings with England, how Confederate soldiers were equipped, and the role of the McRae family.

The papers tell the story of the Confederacy's lifeline to England, says Roberson. "This is one of the last unexplored areas in Civil War scholarship." The financial arrangements, dealings of South Carolina and other states with English merchants, blockade running, diplomatic efforts to win recognition and support from England are all in the McRae Papers.

"These documents complete the circle on purchases," says Huey. There has always been great interest in trying to determine what the South imported. It is known, for example, that many British Enfield rifles were imported, but how many? The McRae Papers will tell.

Such questions persist because most documents were destroyed after the war. Arms sales violated neutrality and the U.S. government sued overseas merchants, so the less evidence the better.

Huey says surviving hardware is supported by the documents, such as requisitions for muskets, caps, scrap iron and clothing. "It's amazing what the invoices tell you," he says. "I can't imagine how many years are involved in research and finding fresh interpretation."

He found the documents interesting for what they tell about South Carolina's involvement in supplying the Confederacy. George Alfred Trenholm, the wealthy and well-connected owner of Fraser, Trenholm & Co. of Charleston, was the government's most important financier.

The firm had an office in Liverpool and a fleet of ships that ran the blockade. It was the exclusive overseas banker for the Confederate government and worked for European support of the South. In July 1864 Trenholm became the Confederacy's Secretary of Treasury.

Huey, who calls Trenholm a "financial wizard," says Fraser & Trenholm's connections and ability to get credit allowed the states to get supplies. "It's amazing how quickly it started after Fort Sumter."

The Charleston company made purchases for every branch and every state. Supplies were then distributed to whatever theater or department needed them. "This was an untold role that South Carolina was playing in the entire war effort," says Huey. "All that money from states flowed through that company."

Behind the scenes for several years was the Confederacy's financial agent Colin McRae. After the war he could not get a pardon. He moved to what was then the British Honduras, now Belize. Some of the McRae Papers include family letters asking him to come home.

His brother John, who was a governor of Mississippi and representative to both the U.S. and Confederate Congresses, died on May 31, 1868, shortly after arriving in Belize to visit Colin, who spent the rest of his life there.

The South Carolina Confederate Relic Room and Military Museum is the state's third oldest museum and is accredited by the American Association of Museums. A local United Daughters of the Confederacy chapter opened the relic room in 1898. The museum is known for its Civil War flags and military artifacts from the Revolution to current wars. Half the collection is Civil War. The facility includes a research library and archives.

With a 2002 move, revision of exhibit interpretation and this summer's 5,000-square-foot expansion, visitation has been growing rapidly to about 20,000 a year.

The museum is open Tuesdays through Saturdays from 10 to 5 and the first Sunday of the month from 1 to 5 p.m. For information call (803) 737-8095 or go to www.crr.sc.gov.

Donations may be mailed to 301 Gervais St., Columbia SC 29201. To contact Roberson about donations write arobers@crr.sc.gov

Our email address is: mail@civilwarnews.com