Sep 28, 2023 - Sale 2646

Sale 2646 - Lot 141

Unsold
Estimate: $ 600 - $ 900
(CIVIL WAR--NEW YORK.) W.H. Brown. Letter describing the Union victory at Fort Fisher. Autograph Letter Signed to brother-in-law Levi Wample. 4 pages, 8 x 5 inches, on one folding sheet; folds, minimal wear. Fort Fisher, NC, 22 January 1865
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Additional Details

Almost the entire letter is devoted to the Battle of Fort Fisher, in which Union captured the Confederacy's last remaining port. The still-controversial explosion of the fort's powder magazine at the battle is also discussed. The letter is long on drama, although less strong on spelling.

"It was the hardest fite ever none on the glob, and thay say that it is the grates victory ever wone, and the most prisners taken that ever was taken at once in a fort. It was the largest garison ever non in a fort. . . . The fite lasted 6 ours after we had taken half of the fort. We held one side and thay the other. . . . Thay surenderd about 10 o'clock at nite, and I was threw the fort the next day, and it was the gratest site that I ever saw. The grond was coverd with ded and wonded, armes and legs and heads in every direction, and peces of men all over the grond. . . . You can walk nearly three quarters on a mile on peces of shell in the fort that the gunbotes threw in. . . . We lost about as meny the next morning by the blowing up a magazine as we lost in the fite. The rebels had a wier strung acrost the river and had a galvanic batry atached to it. There was about 300 hundred covered up and kiled and wonded in the exploding of the magazine."

The author served in the First Brigade of the Second Division, mentioning that his brigade's commanding general Newton Curtis was wounded. The 112th New York Infantry was one of four regiments in that brigade. They were raised around Jamestown, NY, and had a private named William H. Brown (1837-1916) of Ellicott, NY who later settled in Battle Creek, MI. It appears that someone named Brown married Catherine Wample (1843-1865), sister of James Levi Wample (1847-1911) of Jamestown, NY.