318

William H. Tabb.

Letters and diary written as a student at Cumberland College shortly before the war.

Mostly Lebanon, TN, 1856-1860
15 Autograph Letters Signed to parents and siblings, plus 2 letters from sister Mollie to William; various sizes, condition generally strong. Some with stamped and postmarked envelopes.

William Henry Tabb (1837-1864) was the son of a minister at the Choctaw Agency in Oktibbeha County, MS. 


His fragmentary diary covers his last days at home with his family before college, and the start of his journey northwards. "I bade my mother and father and brother goodbye. I felt a great deal, and was sorry to leave them, but after I got in the stage at Choctaw Agency I felt more easy." [23] pages. 4¾ x 2¾ inches, unbound, 24 May to 18 June 1857. 

Tabb's first letter was written from Nashville, describing his journey northward: "I do not like Nashvill much, it looks too ancient and too much like a jail" (22 June 1857). On 25 July 1857 he describes his first impressions of the Cumberland College campus in Lebanon, not long before it was razed by Confederate troops: "a beautiful and wide-spreading campus, ever refreshed by cool mountain breezes, where all is as quiet as the sea when calm." 

His 9 April 1859 letter describes the accidental shooting of student John Bark by his roommate Harvey Topp.

One undated letter fragment describes a rally held by the Know-Nothing Party: "The Know-Nothings made quite a display here last night. . . . It is ridiculous the way they act. . . . They fixed up some transparencies, had several drums and fifes, which sounded like tin pans. . . . I could have collected the Negroes from several plantations around our house . . . and surpassed it a long ways." 

With graduation looming and not knowing that his enlistment in the Confederate army was just a year away, he mused to his father: "I often think of next fall and my future life, which I anticipate spending with those to whom I am indebted for all that I am or ever shall be. . . . I have been blessed and favored all my life" (23 February 1860). 

His final letter from Lebanon describes his participation in a mock Congress, in which he was assigned to play a Vermont Senator: "I  am going to make a speech today on a bill to erect a monument over John Brown." He asks "Does Pa read the newspapers much? Who is he going to vote for for president? The nominees of the Charleston Convention?"

Also included are two letters from sister Mollie, from the Macon Institute in 1856 and the Calhoun Institute in 1857. A ninth-plate tintype portrait is thought to be of Tabb.

Provenance: Tabb's sister Mary Frances "Mollie" Tabb Moore (1841-1921); her daughter Augusta Moore Bahner (1882-1960); her grandson Thomas Maxfield Bahner (1933-2023); by his estate at auction, July 2025.

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