These letters were written by Westporter Benjamin Toquet while serving in the Union Army during the Civil War. They were written aboard Planter, a former Confederate sea mining ship commandeered by its enslaved crew and sailed north where the crew was emancipated. Toquet’s letters from aboard Planter, and while stationed at a New Orleans plantation, offer a first-hand account of slavery in the South, and his own state of mind regarding relations between White and African Americans.
