(CIVIL WAR KANSAS) [Cole Horace] My Recollections of the Wa

Sale 2163 - Lot 92

Price Realized: $ 720

?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price

Estimate: $ 600 - $ 900

A NIGHT IN THE SWAMP WITH GENERAL GRANT (CIVIL WAR--KANSAS.) [Cole, Horace.] My Recollections of the War of 1861-5. Autograph Manuscript on 9 pages of an unrelated 101-page manuscript account book. Large folio (17 x 10.5 inches), 1/4 calf, moderate wear; hinges split, minor soiling and marginal wear, some pages from blank sections of the book are torn or excised. [Lyons, WI, 1886?]

Set Alert for Similar Items

Additional Details

Horace Cole (1833-1894) settled with his parents in Wisconsin as a youth. He was in Lawrence, Kansas when the Civil War broke out and enlisted in the 1st Kansas Infantry, rising to the rank of sergeant. After the war he farmed in Lyons, WI, where he apparently wrote this entertaining memoir. He describes the mood in camp shortly after enlistment: "It was the prevailing opinion among us that it was not going to be much of a war, and that we would have a holyday season of playing soldier. We would sit in our tents and discuss the war and its cause and probable outcome as wise as congressmen." Early in the war, Cole was wounded and then abandoned when the battle shifted: "It was with peculiar feelings I sat upon the window sill and saw them leaving us behind, but all those who were not able to march and keep up, had to be left. Soon after our troops left, the rebs made their appearance." The memoir ends with an interesting incident in February 1863, where Cole accompanied General Grant and a small group of cavalrymen to scout a route near Lake Providence, LA. The group miscalculated and had to spend the night in a swamp: "It being wet and swampy we were obliged to sleep in our saddles or on the roots of cypress trees. Gen. Grant fared no better than the rest of us."
This memoir is pencilled into the blank pages of a volume which is interesting in its own right: a log of tickets sold for the Racine & Mississippi and Northern Illinois Railroads, 1863-1870.