South Carolina Claims Documents General's Family Wants To Sell
By Deborah Fitts
October 2004

COLUMBIA, S.C. - Plans by a descendant of a Confederate general to auction offpapers from his famous ancestor have been scotched by the State of South Carolina, which has moved to seize the documents.

South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster served a temporary restraining order Friday, Aug. 6, against an auction house in Columbia, the day before Thomas Law Willcox was scheduled to sell off 444 documents handed down from his great-great-uncle, Gen. Evander McIver Law.

McMaster asserted that the papers belong to South Carolina because they were among the official documents that the governor ordered spirited out of Columbia in February 1865 in advance of the Union army under Gen. William T. Sherman.

"The State of South Carolina is not contending that the Law family did anything illegal," said Trey Walker, a spokesman for McMaster. "But these letters are just as much part of the [state] archives, and just as much state property, as if they were taken out of the governor's office today."

Walker added that the Law family was "to be commended for keeping the documents in such fine condition."

The papers are purported to be those to and from the state's two wartime governors, Francis Pickens and Milledge Bonham. There are several from prominent Confederates, including three handwritten dispatches from Robert E. Lee written in late 1861 and early '62 as he worked to strengthen coastal defenses in the area; a letter from Wade Hampton offering to raise a cavalry outfit; and several letters by Gen. Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard.

Willcox , in his late 60s, a retired businessman and building contractor living at Seabrook Island south of Charleston, had maintained anonymity prior to the auction. But within days he revealed his identity, filing for bankruptcy in federal court.

Walker said that action has "put a freeze" on the state's ability to recover the papers, "till the federal bankruptcy court can determine if the letters are part of the estate."

Willcox's lawyer, Charleston attorney Kenneth Krawchek, suggested that the state will have a hard time making its case.

"The state maintains that these are public records, but we don't even know if that's true," Krawchek said. And even if it is determined that they are public records, he said, "Were they abandoned? Or given away? We don't know that. Everybody at the time thought that General Law was the right one to keep these."

According to the attorney general's office, on Feb. 16, 1865, as Sherman's army threatened the capital at Columbia, the state's official papers were placed on a train and sent out of the city. Law was apparently involved in the evacuation. The papers got as far as Chester, about 45 miles north, where they were sitting on rail cars when Columbia burned the following day.

By late 1865, nearly all the papers had made their way back into state keeping in Columbia. How and why Law came to possess the 444 documents, no one can explain.

"We just don't know," said Krawchek. "Family lore is not revealing." He said Willcox received the collection from his aunt, Blanche Law, Gen. Law's granddaughter.

Willcox had the papers appraised several years ago at $2.5 million, according to Krawchek. He "quietly" approached "several libraries and state institutions" in attempt to sell them as a collection, but without success. Eventually, "financial and health problems forced him into auction."

Krawchek said more than a dozen prospective bidders from around the country had scheduled plane flights to attend the auction. "There was high interest."

He expressed indignation over the state's actions in securing a microfilm of the documents. State Archivist Rodger Stroup had asked for the filming, Krawchek said, "and said the state would not press ownership. I arranged to bring the documents to the state archives in Columbia. We were very courteous, very nice. At 9:30 the next morning they had an injunction on me."

It was Stroup who alerted the attorney general's office to the planned auction.

"I personally haven't looked at them that closely," said Stroup, who is director of the South Carolina Department. of Archives and History. "My staff realized that these constituted a body of records of the government," and that therefore, by state law, they belonged to South Carolina.

"They're the official papers of the governors during the war," Stroup said, "and they reflect the thinking of the government, and military information. We'd like to have the originals back."

Krawchek, meanwhile, said, "Collectors should be nervous" over the state's contention that, despite the passage of nearly 140 years, "once it's a government document, it's always a government document."

"You're not going to have a receipt after several generations," he said.

Noted Civil War historian and Confederate authority Robert K. Krick said he was skeptical when he first heard the state's claim. But after reviewing the papers on the auction house Web site, he concluded that their "overriding importance was to the operations of the governor's office in South Carolina."

Krick said Law was well known after the war for his role in preserving Confederate records and supporting veterans' affairs. He estimated that despite the $2.5 million appraisal, the papers "would bring half of that" at auction.

Krick also disputed Krawchek's contention that the state's attempt to seize the papers would have a chilling effect on other collectors. Very little in the collecting field comprises official government documents, he said.

Krawchek predicted action in bankruptcy court sometime this fall.