Sep 17, 2015 - Sale 2391

Sale 2391 - Lot 119

Price Realized: $ 625
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 400 - $ 600
(CIVIL WAR--OHIO.) Wynn, David. An Ohio soldier's account of the Confederate surprise attack at Stone's River. Autograph Letter Signed to John Griffeth of Plymouth, OH. 4 pages, 8 x 5 inches, on one folding sheet; foxing, folds, tape repairs to one corner. With original stamped envelope with Annapolis postmark, and full typed transcript. Camp Parole, MD, 3 March 1863
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The Confederates opened the Battle of Stones River, TN with a surprise morning attack on 31 December 1862. Gen. Richard W. Johnson's division on the Union's left flank was still eating breakfast and barely had the opportunity to get a shot off; more than half of the division was captured or killed. Sergeant David Wynn of the 49th Ohio Infantry was one of the captured. In this letter, written while awaiting his release from parole camp, he places the blame for the debacle squarely on Johnson's shoulders:
"The eavening before, our Brigadear General went to old Jonson and asked him if the brigade should load thare pieces, and the old fellow stoped him off as short as he could. . . . He would send him word when he should load, and thar we was ordered to lay on our arms and not one of them was loded. . . . In the morning we was ordered to cook breakfast and the boys was of a gitting watter to make them some coffee and the Rebs charged on us and the regts that was on picket. The reserv did not have thare guns loaded." At first, the Ohio men were uncertain whether the charging troops were union or rebel, so "we could not fire a gun till thare was one of the Rebs came up to the batteries and said 'horra for Texas,' and then thare was a voly of lead came from thare peaces that they seemed to fall thicker than the drops of rain from the heavens in the time of a storm. . . . The flag barar got his leg shot off and thare he stood and held the flag untill thare marching columns was past it."