Autograph Letter Signed, USS Steamship Southampton, Port Praya [Cape Verde Island, off the coast of West Africa], February 21, 1846, to Lt. Commander Henry W. Morris, Commanding USS Southampton

Quarto, one page, in good, clean and legible condition.

1846 US Navy Doctor's concern for the health of African Black sailors.

"… I deem it my duty, most respectfully to suggest, that the exclusion of the Kroomen from that portion of the forehold which they have been accustomed to occupy, will probably be attended with serious consequences to their health, if by such arrangement they should be compelled to sleep on the upper deck. They are already suffering and complaining much of a temperature much lower than that to which they are habituated."

"Kroomen" were Africans who served as sailors aboard American ships of the African Squadron – assigned to intercept vessels engaged in the illegal slave trade – both because of their local knowledge and to "relieve" the white American sailors from more "hazardous" duties. US Naval vessels were often anchored at a considerable distance from the African coast, so that white sailors could "avoid exposure to the heat of the day" and the "deleterious" night air. The Africans, in contrast were used to warmer evening temperatures, and as seen from this letter were being compelled to sleep on deck.

There were a relatively small number of African-American sailors in the US Navy before the Civil War. African "roomen" were more commonly seen on US vessels in those waters. But such solicitous concern for their health must have been rarely heard from US Naval officers, so many of whom were from the slave states. Tuckerman was a 29-year-old Bostonian and Harvard graduate, married to a Saltonstall whose father was President of the Massachusetts Senate. Morris, a New Yorker in his 40s, was also from a distinguished family – grandson of the financier who signed the Declaration of Independence. Tuckerman later left the Navy; Morris remained to rise to the rank of Commodore during the Civil War, seeing combat in which his ship was shot from under him.