Mar 10, 2011 - Sale 2239

Sale 2239 - Lot 341

Price Realized: $ 2,400
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 3,500 - $ 5,000
" GENERAL BUTLER TOOK IT WITH 12000 BLACKS " (MILITARY--CIVIL WAR.) HAZZARD, LEWIS. Autograph Letter Signed from a black soldier to his family. Single 4to sheet, folded to form four pages, written on three sides; creases where folded; a couple of tiny cracks at the juncture of the folds. With the original mailing envelope. [Beaufort, S.C.] 20 May, 1864
Set Alert for Similar Items

Additional Details

An exceptional letter from Lewis Hazzard, a member of the 29th Regiment Connecticut Colored Infantry. Lewis Hazzard came from Winchester Connecticut. A farmer, he volunteered at Fair Haven when he was 24 years old. He and Company G were embarked for Annapolis on the 22nd of March 1863, pitching their first tents near Camp Parole. They were soon given Springfield muskets, assigned to the Ninth Corps and shipped down to Hilton Head, South Carolina. From there they proceeded to Beaufort on the South Carolina coast. It was from here that Hazzard wrote the present letter:

"My dear Mother, i now take my pen in hand to let you kno that I am as well as usual and Bill is to and I must say to you that I am reduse to the ranks and I like my pessisian much better I am as I must say to you that the privates get the same pay as the uncommissioned officers do and I think that I had rather be a private for the uncommission officers have it heard to be running hear and there on gard and so on first coporal of the gard one day and coporal of the perlise the other. . . They say that Richmond is taken [not as yet true] we got the news yesterday that the 19th and the bateries fired their canons and the artilery fired to and they say General Butler took it with 12 thousand blacks, and yesterday we sined the pay rolle for 700 dollars from the Government and they say that the State of Connecticut is to pay us 600. . . they say that we are to receive the same as whites get."

A portion of the regiment soon saw action and, according to the Regiment's biographer, (Henry G. Marshall) "Though coming under fire for the first time, the men displayed great coolness and bravery." The 29th was then assigned to General William G. Birney's Brigade, Division of the Tenth Corps, joining the 7th, 8th, 9th. From here onward Hazzard saw action at Deep Bottom, then Bermuda Hundred, and Petersburg. Lewis Hazzard fought his last battle at Kell House, near Richmond, where he was fatally wounded on October 27th 1864. The 29th Connecticut saw almost continuous action from July 5th 1864 to February 18th 1865.