A collection of 51 manuscript personal letters, mostly directed to the Lowell, Massachusetts law student William H. Anderson from friends around Natchez, Mississippi during the secession crisis of 1860-61. Twenty-three of these were written by David P. Williams, from April 1859 to October 1861; 16 by Joel J. Hough, July 1859 to February 1862; and 12 by J. Oscar Teil, November 1860 to August 1862. The letters were received by Anderson before and after his own sojourn in the South; there is a chronological gap in the correspondence, from mid-1859 to mid-1860, that encompasses the time Anderson spent at Sligo Plantation in Adams County, Mississippi. The letters were received in the North—probably at Lowell, for the most part, though no envelopes are present. In 1859 Williams recruited Anderson by letter to teach at his plantation school. Even after Anderson returned North in mid-1860 Williams continued to write regularly, urging him to return or seeking advice on a replacement. He also mentions personal and family matters, like the possible sale of the Sligo plantation and the deaths of four of his children. Letters written on 4 January and 11 March 1861 discuss the deepening divide between North and South. Hough's letters to his Yale classmate (and former teaching colleague in Mississippi) provide an overview of the unfolding crisis from a very different perspective. Despite Williams' insistence that candidates for his teaching positions be "sound" on slavery, Hough was anything but, and viewed Southern life and culture with a partisan Republican eye. In six long letters written from 19 November 1860 to 4 April 1861 he treats the evolving political situation in New Orleans, Natchez, and the hinterlands in considerable detail. Teil's letters to Anderson from the South likewise describe the secession crisis, if in a less irreverent manner. His final two letters date from his period of service in the 7th Rhode Island Cavalry.