Apr 15, 2021 - Sale 2564

Sale 2564 - Lot 193

Price Realized: $ 312
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 300 - $ 400
(CIVIL WAR--OHIO.) Charles Cotter. Description of the Battle of Rowlett's Station by the captain of Cotter's Battery. Autograph Letter Signed "Charley" to parents in Middlebury, Summit County, OH. 7 pages, 8 x 4 3/4 inches, on 3 sheets (2 of them being illustrated "From Cotter's Battery" letterhead); folds, light toning. With original stamped Cotter's Battery envelope bearing Louisville, KY postmark. Green River [near Munfordville], KY, 21 December 1861

Additional Details

Cotter's Battery was formed in Ravenna, OH as a 3-month regiment in the early months of the war, and then re-upped for 3 years as Battery A of the 1st Ohio Light Artillery. Charles Sumner Cotter (1828-1886), author of this letter, was the captain of the battery. He writes: "We are at Green River, where Buckner (the rebel genl) blew up the RR bridge. It was a beautiful structure of iron, one thousand yards from bank to bank. . . . He blew up one pier and destroyed two spands of the bridge and took all the track from the rest. . . . We have had several skirmishes with our picketts but have never come in range of my peices untill last Tuesday. They came up in force to attack us and prevent us from repairing rail road bridge. We had one regt of infantry acrost the river. They charged on them with the Texan Rangers but they were repulsed and I opened two of my peices on them with shell. . . . Their was fifty-four of the rebels killed and left on the field. . . . We lost sixteen killed." He also describes the battery's new flag given by the ladies of Louisville. Captain Cotter served for the entirety of the war and mustered out as a colonel.