July 14th, 2011
This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 7/14/2011
War-date Confederate soldier’s Autograph Letter Signed by John P. Dewar, 31st North Carolina Infantry, POW at Roanoke Island, 4pp. quarto, Camp Martin, near Kinston, North Carolina, November 16, 1862, and reads in part: “...You must not think hard of me for not writing home for we have been on a march for the last ten days...we marched on down to Newbern...we come up with the picket and drove them in and followed them until they cut down the bridge and we had to stop but our company didn’t go with the rest of the regt. Seven companies with ours one of different Regts went over to the rail road but we didn’t come up with the enemy as soon as the rest of the Brigade. We stopped in about four miles until the moon rose and then marched on over to the rail road but we didn’t quit there before we came up with the picket. They halted us but we didn’t stop and they fired on us and hit one of the men that was with us and wound him so he died in two or three days, but we formed a line of battle in the woods and marched on but we didn’t go far before they fired on us again. But we marched on a little further and they commenced firing on us with artillery from three different ways and it looked like they knowed where we was. The shots hit the tops of the trees over our heads we stayed there until they shot seven or eight and they give the command to retreat so we left...we didn’t have more than two hundred & fifty men but I reckon that if they hadnt to commenced firing the artillery we would a marched on them and if we had we would a been all killed or taken prisoners, for I heard that our picket sais that they was ten thousand strong...” Fine condition.
Click on a thumbnail above to display a larger image below
Hold down the mouse button and slide side to side to see more thumbnails(if available).
Click above for larger image.