Female Spies are Imprisoned Near Leesburg

This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 7/14/2011

War-date Union soldier’s Autograph Letter Signed by Stinson P. Everill, 1st Pennsylvania Light Artillery, DOW at Gaines’ Mill, 6/27/62, 4pp. octavo, on “ONWARD TO VICTORY” patriotic lettersheet, Camp Pierpont, Virginia, December 6, 1861, and reads in part: “...We were on a foraging expedition today and have just returned. We were out two miles in the direction of Leesburg and succeeded in obtaining 138 wagon loads of wheat, corn, &c. Brought in some seven or eight prisoners. We took them as spies. Out where we were they have five or six females under arrest or rather in a house with a guard around it to prevent their escaping. Among the number is a young lady of I suppose about 17, and she is pretty in the extreme. As our wagons passed the house loaded with wheat and corn she stood in the door of her prison house as it were and I noticed that she wept. Poor girl! thought I your lot is indeed wretched, to see the produce of your own home carried away and that too while you are a prisoner. I felt for her, my heart was sad at her situation. Yes I could have wept for her but it was no use. The thought occured to me that it was cruel to treat her so and I think so now. My heart is heavy with the bitter thoughts of her. My sympathy is enlisted in her favor and my prayer is that heaven may sustain her. When we were coming home we stopped in front of a house, I had a curiosity to see the condition of a Secesh house. I went into that one. The family consisted of an aged mother and her only child a young lady I suppose of 18...The daughter told me that her father had been pressed into the Southern army, that they had not heard from him for a long time and that they supposed him dead. I asked her which she thought to be right the north or south. She said that under the existing circumstances she did not like to answer the question, but upon me assuring her that her answer was safe in my keeping, she answered that her father was a Union man and that she was satisfied that the north was right and the south wrong, but living as they did she had to be secession or they would be punished...” More. Fine condition.

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