?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 600 - $ 900
"I THREW MYSELF IN AMONG THE DEAD DYING WOUNDED FRIGHTEND MEN " (CIVIL WAR--NEW YORK.) Murphy, Cornelius. Archive of 4 Autograph Letters Signed from a Union soldier to his sister. 4 leaves, 8vo, slight separations at folds and minor browning. Vp, 1862-64
lively letters by an irish-american soldier, with a gripping description of the siege of petersburg. Cornelius Murphy (ca. 1840-1864), son of Irish immigrants, was a journeyman brush-maker in Lansingburgh (now Troy) NY when he enlisted as a private in the 4th New York Heavy Artillery. His letters home are peppered with humor and slang. Includes 4 letters: Alexandria City, VA, 19 December 1862, concluding "I am very dry, I guess I will have some loger." Fort Ethan Allen [Arlington, VA], 18 March 1864, complaining about soldiers being cheated out of bounty money: "It wouldent be N.Y. if some mean act warent done to its soldiers, for my part I dont care a snap." He concludes "The band is here playing like hell." Upton's Hill, VA, Thanksgiving [1863?], pining that "its a queer Thanksgiving to me" and reminiscing about "the gay scene in Egberts Hall just one year ago." In front of Petersburg, VA, June 19 1864, describing a battle during the siege of Petersburg: "I got to the Co. just as Jim Kirkpatrick got a shot in the leg, the Capt. got one also. So far we had done well but some one thought we could do more so we undertook to carry an ungodly line of works . . . Some of us stood and pegged at them for a minute or so but twas no use, all their line was firing. I saw the game was up and so comending my self to His care I got back to the rifle pits where I threw myself in among the dead dying wounded frightend men already there." In the subsequent retreat, "the rifle I carried in my right hand was made splinters of." He concludes: "This regt is now relieved and we are going to the rear. If that aint good news to us, then I don't know what is."
Records show that Cornelius Murphy was killed the next day at Petersburg.
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