Restrictions to Access

No restrictions. Open for research.

Restrictions to Use

No usage restrictions.

Copyright Notice

Copyright is retained by the authors of items in these papers, or their descendants, as stipulated by United States copyright law.

Preferred Citation

[Identification of item], in the Robert Ransom Papers, #622-z, Southern Historical Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Acquisitions Information

Received from David Sweet of Bristol, Conn., 1974.

Additional Descriptive Resources

A copy of the original finding aid for this collection is filed in folder 1.

Sensitive Materials Statement

Manuscript collections and archival records may contain materials with sensitive or confidential information that is protected under federal or state right to privacy laws and regulations, the North Carolina Public Records Act (N.C.G.S. § 132 1 et seq.), and Article 7 of the North Carolina State Personnel Act (Privacy of State Employee Personnel Records, N.C.G.S. § 126-22 et seq.). Researchers are advised that the disclosure of certain information pertaining to identifiable living individuals represented in this collection without the consent of those individuals may have legal ramifications (e.g., a cause of action under common law for invasion of privacy may arise if facts concerning an individual's private life are published that would be deemed highly offensive to a reasonable person) for which the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill assumes no responsibility.

Processed by: SHC Staff

Encoded by: Noah Huffman, December 2007

Updated by: Kate Stratton and Jodi Berkowitz, January 2009

This collection was rehoused and a summary created with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

This finding aid was created with support from NC ECHO.

The following terms from Library of Congress Subject Headings suggest topics, persons, geography, etc. interspersed through the entire collection; the terms do not usually represent discrete and easily identifiable portions of the collection--such as folders or items.

Clicking on a subject heading below will take you into the University Library's online catalog.

• Autobiographies--North Carolina.
• Confederate States of America. Army--Officers--Biography.
• Ladies Memorial Association (New Bern, N.C.)
• Ransom, R. (Robert), 1828-1892.
• Sweet, David.
• United States. Army--Military life--History.

Robert Ransom (1828-1892) was a major general in the army of the Confederate States of America. Ransom was a native of Warren County, N.C., and graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1850. He served in the United States army in the Department of Mexico, 1851-1854, at West Point, 1854-1855, in Kansas, 1855-1857, and intermittently in other locations, 1857-1859. He resigned to enter Confederate service. He achieved the rank of major general in May 1863 and retired in late 1864 due to illness. He later worked as a civil engineer and died in New Bern, N.C.

The collection contains a speech, 1887, of Robert Ransom to the Ladies Memorial Association of New Bern, N.C., about the Civil War; and a copy of "'It Does Appear That I Am For All My Life To Be At Hard Employment...' The Annotated Autobiography of Robert Ransom, Major General, C.S.A., Covering His Early Life and Service in the United States Army Before the Civil War," transcribed, with notes and an introduction, by David Sweet as a Dartmouth College honors project, 1974, with an accompanying genealogical chart. The unfinished autobiography covers events in Ransom's life up to the spring of 1859.