July 14th, 2011
This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 7/14/2011
War-date Union soldier Autograph Letter Signed by George H. Clark, Company I, 33rd Massachusetts Infantry, he was killed in action at Wauhatchie, Tennessee October 29, 1863. This letter is 4pp. octavo, pencil, June 15, 1863, Centerville, Virginia, and reads in part: “...we received orders to march immediately with empty knapsacks, our blankets and three days rations...we marched all night & the greater part of the next day making forty miles in less than 24 hours arriving at Beale’s Station on the Orange & Alexandria R.R. and about nine miles from teh Rappahannock...There we were joined by three other regts....Monday we were supplied with six days more rations...marched to the river at Beverly Ford, crossed and had a brush with the rebs, the particulars of which you have seen in the papers...Our Reg Cavy for sometime supporting a battery on this side the river and watching the fight, it was an exciting spectacle, but I have no time to give particulars now...We took a position on the left of the line to support a battery which was engaged. We lay flat on the ground the enemy’s shell bursting over among & all around us, but without hitting a man...The rebs found their position too hot for them and fell back. Our batty followed and the right wing of our Reg was deployed as skirmishers to prevent a surprise on the left flank, and amused ourselves by exchanging shots with a lot of reb sharp shooters who were concealed in a wood, while we covered ourselves as well as we could behind stumps...every time a man on either side showed himself he would get a shower of bullets about his ears that reminded me of a swarm of bees...” More. VG. The Battle of Brandy Station, also called the Battle of Fleetwood Hill, was the largest predominantly cavalry engagement of the American Civil War, as well as the largest to take place ever on American soil. It was fought at the beginning of the Gettysburg Campaign by the Union cavalry under Maj. Gen. Alfred Pleasonton against Maj. Gen. J.E.B. Stuart's Confederate cavalry on June 9, 1863. Pleasonton launched a surprise dawn attack on Stuart's cavalry at Brandy Station, Virginia. After an all-day fight in which fortunes changed repeatedly, the Federals retired without discovering Gen. Robert E. Lee's infantry camped near Culpeper. This battle marked the end of the Confederate cavalry's lopsided dominance in the East. From this point in the war, the Federal cavalry gained strength and confidence
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