Raynors HCA 2015-08
This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 8/27/2015
Excellent content 4 pp. letter, June 28, 1864, Schenectady, NY. From E.P. Dodge to his friend Coggin. While working for the Schenectady & Catskill Railroad Dodge encounters supporters of the south, reads in part "….I am with a party of surveyors who are laying out a line for the Schenectady & Catskill Railroad which is about 40 miles long….I may get my discharge by the middle of next month….I am glad we have got one good General in the army, but I am afraid we have found him too late" (most likely referring to General U.S. Grant)…."I fear the country is ruined, ruined too by the most cowardly set of men that ever walked the earth, Northern Copperheads. I heard one say the other day he wished the rebels would take Washington and then the people, as he calls the Copperheads, would rise up and inaugurate Jeff Davis President, and reconstruct the Union. And he speaks the mind of two thirds of the people I meet with. I sometimes wish, as Nero did of the Roman people, that the Copperheads had but one neck that I could sever it at a blow, and you better believe I wouldn't hesitate long to do it. All the men but two, in our party, are hot headed secessionists. I heard one of them say the other day he was going to do his fighting in New York State. In the same manner the rioters did last July. I suppose although he is ashamed to own it. They all pitch into me. I sometimes get my match in superiority of numbers, but more frequently they turn to cursing the Abolitionists of Massachusetts….". Dodge continues speaking of Girls back home and other personal matters. An excellent content letter relaying the sentiments of many in the north, and also mentioning the Draft Riots that occurred in New York City in July 1863.
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