(CIVIL WAR CONFEDERATE) Ambrose Powell Hill Note to a fello

Sale 2646 - Lot 81

Unsold

Estimate: $ 1,000 - $ 1,500

(CIVIL WAR--CONFEDERATE.) Ambrose Powell Hill. Note to a fellow future general while serving at "Camp Alligator" in Florida. Autograph Note Signed simply "Hill," to Darius Couch, with additional manuscript note below. One page, 5 x 3 3/4 inches; minor foxing, spot-mounted on verso to a scrapbook sheet. "Camp Alligator", FL, circa 1849-1850

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Additional Details

Darius Couch and A.P. Hill attended West Point together (classes of 1846 and 1847 respectively), and had somewhat parallel military careers which culminated as leading generals on opposite sides in the Civil War. This short joking note was penned by Lieutenant Hill during his extended service in Florida between the second and third Seminole Wars. It probably dates from 1849 or 1850, when both Hill and Couch were stationed in Florida. We have not yet traced the location of Camp Alligator; Hill was at Fort Gatlin near Orlando in October 1849, and at Camp Alafia, FL east of Tampa from July to October 1850. Camp Alligator certainly sounds like a good nickname for Camp Alafia. The note reads:

"Many thanks, my dear Couch, for the cigars; they were like the memory of joys past, pleasant and mournful. The invoices and receipts I have altered to six hundred, as that will leave me with a surplus. What's the news? . . . Hill."

A note in the lower margin, in a contemporary hand: "This note was from Hill A.P. . . . Lt. Gen. C.S.A., Camp Alligator, Fla." Provenance: taken from a scrapbook kept by Hill's army comrade and future opponent Darius Couch.