Apr 15, 2021 - Sale 2564

Sale 2564 - Lot 194

Price Realized: $ 500
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 300 - $ 400
LAST BATTLE OF THE CIVIL WAR? (CIVIL WAR--OHIO.) Theodore Longwood. Comical account of a mass breakout from the Union parole camp at Camp Chase. Autograph Letter Signed to brother Amos Longwood of Aberdeen, IN. 4 pages, 8 x 5 inches, on one folding sheet; folds, minor wear. With mailing envelope bearing Columbus postmark but stamp excised. Camp Chase, OH, 7 June 1865
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Theodore Longwood (1843-1877) was serving in the 20th Indiana Infantry when captured at Weldon Railroad in 1864. He was exchanged from a Confederate prison and (like many exchanged Union soldiers) sent to a Union parole camp at Camp Chase in Columbus, OH. In this letter, Longwood grumbles that after the fighting ceased, "the officers are not in any hurry about getting out of the service, so they want to keep us as long as possible." A small group of parolees escaped through the stockade fence and enjoyed an evening in town. Emboldened, "the proled men thought they had been in prison long enough, so on last Tuesday eve we thought we would show the millitias that we would not be guarded so close, so we got about 500 paroles together and went with a yell for the stockade and we was successful, for we knocked two or three holes in it that you could drive a eight horse teem through. So when we went out and stayed as long as we wanted to, we come back. Since then, the Gen. lets some go out every day. We got one man wounded in the leg, so that was the last battle we was in. It is called the Battle of Camp Chase, Ohio, one of the most successful of the war."

The generally accepted last land skirmish of the Civil War was at Palmito Ranch, TX on 13 May, so if you count this Battle of Camp Chase as a real battle, it would be one for the record books. You shouldn't count it--but it's a fun story.