Tuesday, April 17, 2018

Alexander H. Stephens to Howell Cobb, February 27, 1845


Steamboat Wilmington                   
(near Charleston Harbour,        
Thursday Morning) , 27 Feb. 1845.

Dear Cobb, According to promise I drop you a line, though I write on the boat where I am rocked and shaken so I fear you can not read it. I have had a fine and comfortable travel so far, and expect soon to take leave of the sea and its dangers. I never had a smoother passage from Wilmington to Charleston. The wind was perfectly calm and the sea at rest. Touching the stages, I ascertained that there is a daily line from Raleigh to Columbia — two horse, I was told. It leaves Raleigh at 2 p. m., and after being out two nights arrives at Columbia at 8 p. m. the third night. Another line leaves the Wilmington railroad at the breakfast house Warsaw, for Fayetteville and Columbia. That is the best route, and it gives you an opportunity of judging of the probable state of the weather — as you can pay to that place, and then if the weather threatens to be bad you can take that line. It leaves the railroad 45 miles from Wilmington; is a four horse coach, but did not look to me as if it could carry more than six. It is a small and slender looking North Carolina affair. But I can say no more.

SOURCE: Ulrich Bonnell Phillips, Editor, The Annual Report of the American Historical Association for the Year 1911, Volume 2: The Correspondence of Robert Toombs, Alexander H. Stephens, and Howell Cobb, p. 68

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