(MILITARY CIVIL WAR) Buckley Charles Waldron Letter by the

Sale 2471 - Lot 266

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Estimate: $ 400 - $ 600

(MILITARY--CIVIL WAR.) Buckley, Charles Waldron. Letter by the white chaplain of the 47th U.S. Colored Infantry. Autograph Letter Signed as "Chas. W. Buckley" to E.N. Andrews, Chaplain of the 2nd New Jersey Infantry. 6 pages, 10 x 7 3/4 inches, on 2 sheets; folds, minor foxing and wear, missing the integral blank from the final sheet. Snyder's Bluff, MS, 8 April 1864

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Describes a battle near Yazoo City the previous month, when the regiment was still called the 8th Louisiana Infantry, African Descent. "We landed, worked till Saturday hard, then fought from 9 A.M. till sunset with three times our number, drove back the enemy, occupied our old lines & gained a hard fought victory. Our regt. suffered severely, 10 killed in action, 63 wounded, some mortally. Such a night as followed I never experienced, was up with wounded & dying till completely exhausted. I never saw suffering before."
On the regiment's current posting, "there are three colored regts of inft. & one colored cavalry regt. . . . There are no white soldiers to disturb or annoy us. . . . It does me good to hear these men pray. They move me to tears sometimes. . . . We have seven or eight hundred contrabands in our lines here. If they are not removed, I expect to have charge of them, gather them together, have rations issued to them, clothe the needy. . . . Poor creatures, many of them suffer, as also do the soldiers, but they think this terrible ordeal through which they are passing is some way connected with freedom, so they utter not a murmur."