Atrocious Casualties at Chancellorsville

This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 9/22/2011

War-date Union soldier's Autograph Letter Signed by Oscar Van Houten, 9th New Jersey Infantry, 4pp. quarto, Camp near Potomac Creek, May 14, 1863, and reads in part: "...I look back of our camp I can see nothing but rolling ground with no sign of cultivation excepting here and there a small log house with a small garden patch around which some has fence around them but others have lost all their fences for the soldiers to boil their coffee with. Virginia is a beautiful country in the summer when everything is in bloom...but in winter it is the most dreary place I ever was in...the water is not very healthy. As I sit here under the shade of a large cherry tree I can see several ships and occasionally a steamer or a gunboat , it puts me in mind of the Newark bay...I must tell you a little about our last battle, on the 29th of April we went down to the river a little below Fredericksburg and opened on the enemy from this side and drove them back so our men could lay the pontoons across it. Well we stayed there all day till the next morning when we left there and went to United States ford about 15 miles above Fredericksburg and crossed and went right into the fighting...then on the second day of May the eleventh corps broke and let the Rebels in our rear. Then we had to turn our battery right around and fire in the opposite direction and they made a charge but we drove them back with canister. Then they brought a battery and fired at us and killed three and wounded five of our men and about twenty horses. One of the men that was killed was that Mr. Ralph Buckley, my old friend, he was shot through the head with a ball and the other had his stomach tore all out, the other one was shot with a shell which bursted in his back. His name was Jack Vaughn,...one of our men is in New York hospital he was wounded right through the small of the back and all he eats comes through the wound. I dont think he will ever get over it. I dont see how it was that any of us escaped for the shells were bursting around us fast and as thick as hail, and the Rebels fired out from three sides..." More. Fine condition....plus; Second war date letter from Van Houten, stating that he believes he is fit for the role of lieutenant. Fair condition. (3 items)

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