Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 142, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 June 1910 — HAS A CONFEDERATE PUZZIE. [ARTICLE]

HAS A CONFEDERATE PUZZIE.

D asm erreo type Charleston Curator Like to Know About. Every northerner who visits Charleston, S. C., should go to the museum of the Daughters of the Confederacy in the old Market hall on Meeting street, is the advice of a writer in the New York Sun. He may be just the one living man who can solve the mystery of the old daguerreotype that was lost In battle and recovered after forty years. The little old lady who to curator and guide about the museum hall hopes that before she dies some one from the north will look iat this faded daguerreotype and say, l, Yes, I know this man.” They have many quaint and sad relics <4f thg war, these daughters of a past generation of fighting men, the writer says. The exhibits stand in cases and hang from the walls of this one room, where the market commissioners of Charleston have held their meetings since first the. Market hall was built in 1841. After the curator has pointed out the confederate flag, which was reconstructed from a captured federal flag—“for silk was a difficult thing to find In those days” •—the original painting of the Interior of Fort Sumter after the long siege, the stars and buttons from General Lee’s coat, she leads her visitors to a case on a side wall and points out the daguerreotype. Then she puts her question: "Do you know this man?” The daguerreotype is round and cut to fit within the back of a watch case, wherein It was set. The portrait, still clear enough to be seen in its every line, is that of a young man in civilian dress—the dress of fifty years ago, with high, rolling stock, low cut waistcoat and frilled shirt front. The youthful face is bearded and the heavy hair waved up Into a dandy’s lock over the forehead. This portrait, backed In the gold watch case, was turned up from a battle field by a plowshare only two years ago. The place where it was thus uncovered was fallow land on Morris Island in Charleston harbor. This is the story the curator tells: It was in 1864, shortly before the evacuation of the crumbling Sumter by the confederates and during the time when the investing federal ships and marines were bending every effort to find a way to fight through to Charleston. A detachment of federal marines landed under cover of gunfire on Morris Island. A repelling force of confederates from Fort Moultrie landed at another point on the Island, crossed over and fell upon the federal marines. There was a hot engagement and in the end the union force was pushed to its boats and back to the blockade fleet. They did not have time even to bury their dead. The scene of this skirmish remained forgotten and untouched from the evacuation of Charleston down to the recent time when the plow was run over the land where the marines had tried to make their stand. Then bullets, cannon shot and belt clasps marked “U. S.” were turned up with human bones. Also this daguerreotype backed in the half of a gold ««tch case and almost undimmed by the long years of burial. “It —is a tittle mystery, this daguerreotype,” says the curator of the museum. “Some day it may be solved.”