(CIVIL WAR OHIO) Ezra Chapman Letter describing the fight a

Sale 2546 - Lot 66

Price Realized: $ 250

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Estimate: $ 200 - $ 300

"SHOOTING AND NOCKING MEN DOWN WITH THE BUT OF A GUN" (CIVIL WAR--OHIO.) Ezra Chapman. Letter describing the fight against bushwhackers under Colonel George Crook. Autograph Letter Signed to nephew Isaiah Franklin "Frank" Palmer. 8 pages, 7 1/2 x 4 1/2 inches, on 2 folding sheets of lined paper with illustrated "Onward to Victory" letterhead; minimal wear. Summersville, WV, 6 January 1862

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Ezra Asbury Chapman (1829-1909) enlisted as a private early in the war with the 36th Ohio Regiment. He was a 32-year-old day laborer from the small village of Barlow in Washington County, Ohio, a few miles from the West Virginia line. The regiment spent its early months battling bushwhackers in and around Summersville, WV. The regiment's commander was Colonel George Crook, later a famed general in the Indian wars: "A man came into camp and told the Col. that thare was a company of rebles out on the road." A New Year's Day skirmish followed: "The first thing our boys new, the bullets came whistling about their ears. They saw at once that the rebles intended to lead them into a trap, so they sent our company round a point to come up behind them. They ware sliping through the brush on the ridge when first thing they knew they ware all mixed up with about their own number of rebles. Then was when the fun commenced, if you would call shooting and nocking men down with the but of a gun fun." He adds, "I do not like bushwhacking, which we think we are intended for, or we never would have got these long range guns. The bushwhackers call our guns 'them bonesmashers.'" He also discusses his decision not to buy a "likeness" from his camp's dubious photographer.