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Autograph Letter Signed. 4pp. + original stamped envelope. To H.B.Craig, Canonsburg, Pennsylvania.

Mitchell had recently moved south to Kentucky. The letter, full of religious rhetoric, describes Christmas day in Danville.

"…all things are very merry on the streets. Such a continual roar of torpedoes and firecrackers is kept up that it is hard to believe the town is not besieged or bombarded with pigmy cannon. The Negroes too are all out as it is customary for them to be free during the holidays. On ordinary days, if it was as cold as to day is, it would a difficult matter to persuade one of them that he would not freeze to death if he left the fire but as its Christmas day they dont seem to mind the cold. What an impulse does liberty give to every species of living things…”

Craig later became a teacher in Albemarle, Virginia, and, just before the Civil War, at the West Florida Seminary – a military school for future Confederate cadets - in Tallahassee, where he eventually opened a private school of his own.