Sep 17, 2015 - Sale 2391

Sale 2391 - Lot 353

Price Realized: $ 780
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 600 - $ 900
(WAR OF 1812.) Haile, William H. Some Incidents and Circumstances Witnessed . . . in the Course of His Life. [32] manuscript pages on 16 disbound folio leaves, apparently lacking pages 5-6; vertical fold, moderate wear to first leaf, vertical fold throughout. (MRS) [Plattsburgh, NY], January 1859 (see page 23)
Set Alert for Similar Items

Additional Details

William F. Haile (1791-1860) was raised in Fairfield, Herkimer County, NY. According to Hurd's History of Clinton and Franklin Counties, he settled in Plattsburgh, NY after the war, where he became a successful lawyer and wrote this unpublished memoir. Pages 7 through 34 all describe Haile's service in the War of 1812, as a lieutenant in the 11th United States Infantry. Serving on the northern border at Plattsburgh, NY, he met Colonel Zebulon Pike: "Our Col. & the other field officers were totally unfitted for drilling & disciplining our regiment. Col. Pike generously volunteered his services to do that for us. Every day he drilled our regiment, together with his own & was of great service in infusing some notions of military order" (page 9). On the other hand, he describes General Joseph Bloomfield as "too old & entirely unqualified for his place & a man of trifling manners & deportment." While wintering at Burlington, VT in "the miserable damp barracks, disease soon broke out among them & the deaths of hundreds soon followed. I recollect one morning counting 22 dead bodies lying out on the piazza of the hospital who had died on the previous night" (page 11). His first combat experience was at the Battle of Crysler's Farm on the St. Lawrence campaign, where the infamous General Wilkinson issued orders while "sick and drunk in bed on board his boat. . . . It was a most stupid & bungling affair on the part of our generals" (page 18). Haile was then deployed to the burnt frontier village of Buffalo under the command of Winfield Scott, who "gave signs of his future by his skill & perseverance in drilling the brigade" (page 25). Three pages are devoted to the Battle of Chippewa in July 1814 (pages 29-32). Haile ran out of water in the heat, and asked some enlisted men for a drink: "One of them handed me his canteen, saying 'There is some whiskey, lieutenant.' I took several swallows without winking." This memoir ends in July 1814 just before Haile's regiment fought at Lundy's Lane.