Mar 10, 2020 - Sale 2533

Sale 2533 - Lot 76

Price Realized: $ 1,625
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 800 - $ 1,200
"THE CAPS MAY RUN AGAINST A SMALL PIECE OF LEAD IF WE GET INTO A BRUSH" (CIVIL WAR--MASSACHUSETTS.) Spinney, George A. Letters of a borderline-mutinous private in the 1st Massachusetts Cavalry. 6 Autograph Letters Signed to his siblings; the first letter trimmed without apparent loss of text, the final letter lacking its final sheet and signature, otherwise minor wear. With full transcripts. Vp, May 1861 to April 1863
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George A. Spinney (1839-1863) spent the first months of the war on active militia duty with the 6th Massachusetts Infantry. The first four letters were written during this period. His 23 May 1861 letter references the Baltimore Riot, where his regiment took the first casualties in action of the war: "We have the satisfaction of knowing by our forcing our way through Baltimore and geting in the Capitol on Friday night that we saved it from the secessionists. . . . In 6 hours more there would have been a force sufficient in Washington to have disputed our entrance."
After his unit was sent home, Spinney joined the 1st Massachusetts Cavalry in September 1861. Two of these letters were written as a cavalryman, both in 1863. On 22 January he wrote from a camp near Potomac Creek, VA while on the infamous "Mud March": "Ammunition and baggage waggons upset or stuck fast, hardtack, oats, beef, ammunition &c spilled out in the mud. . . . The mud is from 6 inches to the horse's belly. . . . Orders from Burnside was to move, as the army in front of Fredericksburg had been weakened by calls to the west. This rain has either done us great injury or great good. There was a big battle prevented by it." His final 10 April letter discusses a grand review of the Cavalry of the Potomac by "the President, Gen. Hooker, Gen. Stoneman and . . . Mrs. Lincoln."
He then goes on a bitter rant against the leadership of his regiment, and against his abolitionist governor John Andrews: "Nigger Andrews has sent us a lot of lieuts that don't know as much as some of our raws at the present time. . . . There are any quantity of privates who can learn the pups of Nigger Andrews. Well, it is no use to complain, but it is hard to trust a man who knows less than you do. If any of these ever has charge of me in action, I shall look for myself first." He then offers some court martial-worthy thoughts: "The one who gets 'gobbled up' (taken prisoner) is considered lucky. I did used to have some disagreeable ideas about being taken prisoner, but I don't believe I should show much fight against a small party. Never mind, the Caps may run against a small piece of lead if we get into a brush the next raid. He will perhaps get a furlough home by way of Adams Express." Yes, this surly private expressed on paper a hope that his captain would be shot in the next battle, possibly by friendly fire, and sent home in a coffin. The captain of Spinney's Company D at this point was apparently Charles Francis Adams Jr., grandson of John Quincy Adams and son of the current envoy to the United Kingdom.
Two months later at the Battle of Aldie, the large majority of the 1st Massachusetts Cavalry was wiped out in an ambush at Snicker's Gap in one of the worst massacres of the war. Private Spinney was among the fallen. Captain Adams survived the war, though.