Sep 29, 2022 - Sale 2615

Sale 2615 - Lot 104

Price Realized: $ 1,500
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 500 - $ 750
(CIVIL WAR--OHIO.) Charles A. Dean. Extensive letters from a discharged veteran in Cincinnati during and after the war. Approximately 175 letters to his friend Everett Walker of Shrewsbury, MA dated 1864-1871, plus one final letter from 1918; condition generally strong; with about 50 postal covers, most with original stamps and postmarks. Cincinnati and elsewhere, 1864-1871, 1918
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Charles Augustus Dean (1844-1921) was an 8th Vermont Infantry Civil War veteran from Shrewsbury, MA who moved in 1864 to Cincinnati, where he worked as a factory hand and traveling salesman for the paper bag manufacturers Nixon, Chatfield & Woods. These letters were written to a hometown friend, and offer a good taste of Cincinnati life and politics during and after the last months of the Civil War. On 25 September 1864 he wrote "There was a great McClellan meeting here last Monday eve and last night a Lincoln meeting, great fireworks and processions at both. I went to the one last night." On 6 November 1864 after the Battle of Cedar Creek, he reports on their late regiment's hardships: "Our reg't, the 8th Vermont, was badly cut up in the late fights, 165 lost, Reed lost his leg. . . . I hope that Old Abe will call for 500,000 more men as soon as he is re-elected and end the war immediately." On 11 November he reported on the election: "Old Abe is all right now, and some say 4 yrs more of war." On 11 December he describes a bet whether Grant takes Richmond before New Years. On 26 February 1865 he wrote "One of the principal newspaper offices was burned out this morning, the Cin. Enquirer, a Copperhead sheet, and a great many were verry glad of it. It was but just across the street from my room here on Walnut and it made me arise verry early, I tell you, for Sunday."

The post-war letters sometimes discuss the local political climate. On 25 May 1868 he wrote that in "this rebel town . . . I am mum on my political standing and say very little to my customers here about negro suffrage and the impeachment." His 1 May 1870 letter notes "you ought to see the style of colored Fifteenth Amendment which just passed. How much we like them now they can vote. I propose to give them something so as to be elected to furnish paper to their public printing. Republicans & Democrats are soft shoeing them for votes."

As a commercial traveler, Dean often described other cities near Cincinnati. On 18 April 1869 he describes a visit to Mammoth Cave in Kentucky, and encloses "a small sample of gypsum which I procured from a point nine miles from the mouth of the cave." On 11 August 1869, he describes a visit to Niagara Falls at length. Dean later returned to Massachusetts and became a successful bag manufacturer on his own account.

WITH--a folder regarding Walker's work with the New England Milk Producers Union, 1884-1889.