NATHANIEL BUNCH

'The best company in the world'

Regardless of whether Jefferson Davis is in his family background, Barack Obama does have ancestors with links to the Confederate cause.

Obama's great-great-great-great-great grandparents Nathaniel and Sarah Bunch had a son who served the Confederacy as a captain in the Arkansas Infantry during the Civil War.

"I am in very good spirits," Larkin C. Bunch wrote in an 1862 letter home to his wife. "I think we will be very able to whip them on any part of the ground."

His father, Nathaniel Bunch, fought in the War of 1812 under future president Andrew Jackson before moving his family by wagon from Tennessee to Arkansas in 1840, according to A Reminiscent History of the Ozark Region, published by the Goodspeed Brothers in 1898.

Research by the Newton County Historical Society, which supplied a copy of Larkin Bunch's letter, suggests that Larkin Bunch might have been a Union man at heart forced into service by the Confederacy's "Conscript Act."

Larkin's letter shows no signs of misgivings, though, vowing victory over "the enemy." But he does paint a mixed picture of the men under him, writing that many were so sick they needed to be sent to "the hospitle," and dozens of others had deserted.

"We are getting along very well," he assured his wife. "I have had 27 men absent with out leave which took all the trash out of my company. I have the best company in the world."

Bunch also had his children in his thoughts as he wrote the letter from Camp Hindman on Nov. 13, 1862.

"Tell the children I am mighty glad to hear that they are so smart. be good and obedient children and when I get home I will fetch them something."

Bunch was killed Sept. 24, 1864 in the battle of Pilot Knob, a failed rebel assault on the Union's Fort Davidson in the mountains of southern Missouri. He was 36.

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"Camp Hindman November 13th 1862

"Dear Wife and Mother

"this leaves me well at this time hoping it may reach you in due time and find you enjoying the same like blessing. The company is not in very good health at this time we are sending off all to the hospitle that is not able to stand a march to day. Prepatory to marching I think that we will march from here to morrow an next day we will go up the river I think towards Van Buren and then strike across to wards the enemy. I am in very good spirits. I think we will be very able to whip them on any part of the ground George Whiteley is sick and gone to the hospitle the Balance of the boys from that settlement is able to march. We are getting along very well. I have had 27 men absent with out leave which took all the trash out my company. I have the best company in the world I believe that they do not need any thing. You may send me some tobacco the first chance as to clothes I have as many as I want. as to the stock you can act discisionary if you think you have the corn to take them through the winter if not sell all you can. Tell the children I am mighty glad to hear that they are so smart be good and obedient chidren and when I get home I will fetch them something.

"I must close for want of time. Tell your mother and Polly that Selby is well. He has bin sick but is well again and that I am well and is fat as you ever saw me.

"Larkin Bunch

"To Eliza Bunch & Sary Bunch, Calvin Bunch, Clary Bunch."

SOURCE: Supplied by the Newton County Historical Society, Jasper, Ark.

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The Bunch family did appear to have some mixed feelings about slavery.

Larkin C. Bunch and his father Nathaniel Bunch had a relative who left a will freeing his slaves after his death -- but only after they completed the final harvest of corn, tobacco and other crops on his Virginia plantation.

And one 11-year-old boy was to remain enslaved until he turned 21, so relatives could benefit from his forced labor.

Larkin Bunch's first cousin twice removed, also named Nathaniel Bunch, had 14 slaves when he died in Louisa County, Va., in July of 1833. An appraisal put their combined worth at $4,105.

Bunch's will requested that, after his death, his slaves be freed and allowed to go to the new African colony of Liberia, which had been created as a home for emancipated slaves. If the newly freed slaves didn't want to leave the country, his executors were "to remove them to some place in the United States where they can enjoy their freedom."

Bunch asked that some of the money from the sale of his 627 acres be used to pay his former slaves' traveling expenses and to provide them with $30 each.

But Bunch ordered that an 11-year-old slave named Andrew not get his freedom for 10 years. During that time, he was to belong to Bunch's sister-in-law and nephew, "but to be treated with that kindness of humanity which is due from the master to the slave."

Before they tasted freedom, the rest of Bunch's slaves -- Adam, Pleasant, John, Henry, Angelina, Ann, Maria, Milly, Elizabeth, Nancy, Billy, John Sharp and Peter -- would first have to spend the year after Bunch's death harvesting the final crops of corn, wheat, oats, tobacco, hay and hemp.

"It is to be understood that my said negroes are to be employed in the cultivation of the said crops and to be treated as slaves during that time," Bunch wrote in his will.

The following year, the newly freed Adam petitioned the state legislature for permission to remain in Virginia to be near his wife and nine children "for whom he has the strongest regard and of whom he is unable to effect a purchase."

Adam argued he was a blacksmith "in the prime of life -- capable of supporting himself, and of rendering much service to his neighborhood."

The legislature denied his request.