Mar 18, 2010 - Sale 2207

Sale 2207 - Lot 78

Price Realized: $ 1,560
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,500 - $ 2,500
(CIVIL WAR--IOWA.) Archive of John Myers correspondence from his service with the 28th Iowa Infantry. 37 letters from Corporal Myers, to his wife Cecelia, and 4 other related letters, various sizes and conditions. Vp, 1862-63
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John Myers (1838-1863) was a farmer in Tama County in central Iowa. Newly married with a baby, he enlisted as a corporal in the 28th Iowa Infantry in August 1862. These letters span his one year of service. Myers was barely literate but a good storyteller. The crude eloquence of these letters was paraphrased and edited into a collection of poems in 1977, Gary Gildner's "Letters from Vicksburg."
As the regiment trained in Iowa, Myers reported on some of his fellow recruits: "The boys are geting so cherlish that it takes 2 oficers to 1 private to keep them strait and then they cant harthy do it. They got oute in town last teudsday knight and got drunk and tore 1 whiskey shop all to smash" (30 October 1862). The regiment saw its first serious combat in May 1863 at Port Gibson: "The enemy was in a cane brake and heavy timber ad first and wea hat to drive them out with the beyonet witch we don with grate sped and success. We then hat them on the open field wher we shot them down by the hundred" (7 May 1863). His 15 May 1863 letter describes the Battle of Champion Hill at length: "we hat just crosed a field when the rebels mate a charge one us and just naturaly cut us all to peases and scatred our regmend . . . I hat my bick toe nale shot off and was struck with a grape shot on the rite nea and the left elbow and a ball on the left ancle which was a glansing shot." 7 other letters describe the ensuing Siege of Vicksburg. Reporting on the hospital scene on 30 May: "I could find man wounted in evry shape that you cold imagin, som with one leg shot off, other with both, some with one leg and one arm off, and one man with his tong shot of. The ball past thro his teath and cut of half his tong."
After surviving this heavy fighting, Corporal Myers contracted cholera and on 24 July was reassigned to the 11th Louisiana Infantry (African Descent) to recuperate as his regiment moved on. His later letters are quite poignant, as he fell out of communication with his family and regiment during his final days. His final letter to Cecelia wonders why she has not written: "I wold like very mutch to now whi I dont get aney letters from you aney more. If you ar agoing to quit writing to me just let me now" (July 1863). He died on 14 August aboard a hospital steamer. A partial letter from John's brother to Cecelia (dated 20 September 1863, a month after his death), reports that nobody had heard from John "for some time," but passes on rumors about John's plans to return home. Finally, a letter from Theodore Schaffer of the 28th Iowa to Cecelia, 2 October 1863, reports that he had just learned of John's death.