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Auction: 315 - Numismatic Collector's Series Sale
Lot: 521

Civil War: Collection Choice selection of items including an early Secession Letter, 2 pages, 4to, Lynchburg, VA, April 30, 1861, lamenting how "War and all its demoralizing consequences reign here. Troops throng the streets - and are as you well know many seeking the army are vicious & careless of consequences and in fact crimes they suppose are to be tolerated such times as these. Several murders in Baltimore other than the engagements with those troops have occurred, some in Washington. Last week here as Senator [future President Andrew] Johnson of Tennessee passed through he barely escaped with his life for his Union sentiments..." With three Soldier´s Letters by Henry Caryl at Ft Marshall in Baltimore, August 10-September 14, 1864. He writes his mother and sister in Charlestown, MA. There is little news from his position behind the front; his company drills in the Maryland countryside, frightening locals who think a battle must be brewing; like so many soldiers, he must combat illness and endure substandard food; he worries in the last letter that he will be sent to New York to enforce the draft, but "I should rather go to the front when I fight I do not want my head smashed with brick bats and paveing stones." With a copy of the New York Times of May 29, 1863, with news of the ongoing investment of Vicksburg; Confederate forces reduced along the Rappahannock (said to be to stop their fishing, when in fact Lee´s forced had begun its swing around the Union right that would end in Gettysburg, PA just a month later); and rebel shipping depredations. All items VG. [5]

Estimate
$300 to $400