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2pp.+stampless address leaf (with free-frank) Addressed to John T. Siler, [“Bachelor Hall”] Postmaster, Berkeley Springs, Virginia, with a postscript to Siler’s law partner, Joseph Duckwall: “Here I am enschounced within the walls of this Monongahely house, a very fine hotel, plenty of skin but as black as the devil. Engaged 3 servants to get me some, thinking that out of all I would get one and lo and behold 3 came thus I was in a quandary thought it would not do to turn any off and besides there was no choice, all are black as ace of spades so I just told 2 to get under the bed until I called out for them. I fixed them all up and they said I done it so well they would not charge any thing…” 

Both revolting and astonishing in its antebellum frankness on a taboo subject, the writer, possibly a former Army officer, was apparently on a business trip to Pennsylvania and Missouri for attorneys Siler and Duckwall, both of whom would serve in the Virginia Legislature. Chambers had come to Pittsburgh by steam boat on the Alleghany River after a “very disagreeable time” crossing the rain-soaked mountains, though “seated by the side of a very pretty Lady who has put herself under my protection to St. Louis”, he being resolved not to “betray my trust”. His gentlemanly manners did not, of course, extend to Black women. Though undated, the letter was evidently written while Siler held federal appointment as Postmaster from October 1849 to 1855. Such bald Southern admissions of inter-racial sex are rarely found in letters of the mid-19th century.