(CIVIL WAR OHIO) Isbell Henry D Letters of a young artiller

Sale 2455 - Lot 95

Price Realized: $ 1,125

?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price

Estimate: $ 400 - $ 600

(CIVIL WAR--OHIO.) Isbell, Henry D. Letters of a young artillery private in Tennessee. 20 Autograph Letters Signed to his parents and his sister Harriet Howland; various sizes, condition generally strong; 7 of them with original envelopes (most lacking stamps). Vp, September 1862 to September 1863

Set Alert for Similar Items

Additional Details

Henry Dwight Isbell (1843-1863) was a farm boy from the rural town of Freedom in northeastern Ohio, serving as a private in Battery A of the 1st Ohio Light Artillery. His battery was stationed in Nashville and Murfreesboro, TN for most of this period, with the last letters written from Alabama. As part of the Army of the Cumberland, he was contemptuous of the efforts of the Army of the Potomac to take Richmond, complaining that "when that army has a fight, they get whiped with a loss of 15,000 or 20,000 men evry time. . . . That eastern army has better living and better cloths and puts on more stile than the western boys, but they can't fight with us" (17 May 1863).
His 15 February 1863 letter looks back on the Battle of Stones River which had taken place six weeks before, defending his battery's reputation: "Father wants to know why I don't brag some, and talks as if I was a coward. . . . After my horse was shot I went to the gun, but it had gone up, for most of the horses were shot and there was no one there but Lieut. C. and L. Col. John Whitney and one other canoneer. . . . I went with Lieut C. to Dick Rogers' gun and we went to working it as fast as we could, but the horse got shot and the limbs nocked to peaces, and we had to leave it. And if we have another fight down here I shall try to stick to my poste as long as there is anything left of the old battery. I hope if they get any of us next time, they will get all of us and make a clean thing of it."