[Original Receipt.] Claim No. 46. Columbia, S.C., 7 March 1864. Received Of The State Of South Carolina Fifteen Hundred [1500] Dollars, Being The Amount Admitted And Advanced By The General Assembly Of The Said State,Upon The Claim Of James Chesnut, For Compensation For His Slave, Named Goliath, Lost By Reason Of The Employment Of Said Slave By The Authorities Of The Confederate Government Upon The Military Fortifications In This State [Chesnut, James] Americana,Civil War,Law,South Carolina,Southern

Oblong broadside, 5-5/8" x 8-5/8." Printed and completed in manuscript. Signed in ink at the end, "James Chesnut Per A.R. Taylor Attorney." Very Good. The Slave States and Confederacy considered slaves a form of property, to be treated as such under their laws. Loss of property impressed into the service of the Confederacy was thus compensible to the owner under appropriate circumstances; Chesnut successfully claimed reimbursement from the State for the death of his slave Goliath. James Chesnut, the beneficiary of South Carolina's generosity, stood high in Plantation Society as a successful lawyer and Democratic U.S. Senator. The well-known diary of his wife, Mary Boykin Chesnut, chronicled their busy social life among the Carolina elite. Chesnut was the first to resign from the Senate upon Lincoln's election. He participated in the Secession Convention, and was a drafter of the Confederate Constitution. As General Beauregard's Aide, he ordered the firing on Fort Sumter.