Raynors HCA 2019-01
This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 2/21/2019
War-date Union soldier Autograph Letter Signed by William F. Smith, Co. B 1st Massachusetts Infantry, 4pp. octavo, Near Spotsylvania Court House, May 19, 1864, and reads in part: “...This is the roughest campaign we ever had and we have run across the roughest works we ever found to take...We were palced here and told to fortify ourselves as we had so much of the lines to hold while the rest of the army attacked the flanks. Our regiment is not much larger than our company used to be a perfect skelton nothing left...We have been in some awful hot places I tell you we crossed the Rapidan without any trouble and advanced most to Mine Run where we found them strongly entrenced, pitched into them the next day but could not drive them an inch...The next day they attacked us but we repulsed till towards night when they made a charge on a regt. in the 6th Corps that never was under fire before and they broke and run but the rebs were quickly drove back. Next day we marched all day and came up their right flank but they was up as quick as we were. We attacked them there two or three times but were drive back while there...Our regiment made a charge, went in with 170 men and came out with only 88 running dow fast...The Johnnies came out to attack us as they see our support was gone but our artillery came up on the double quick and quick made them skedaddle to their holes. After being relieved about an hour it was fall in and march all night up here where Burnside was getting drove...There is an awful pile of wounded so far on this campaign. A larger percentage of the loss is wounded than on any other campaign...” Fine condition. The Battle of Spotsylvania Court House, sometimes more simply referred to as the Battle of Spotsylvania (or the 19th-century spelling Spottsylvania), was the second major battle in Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant's 1864 Overland Campaign of the American Civil War. Following the bloody but inconclusive Battle of the Wilderness, Grant's army disengaged from Confederate General Robert E. Lee's army and moved to the southeast, attempting to lure Lee into battle under more favorable conditions. Elements of Lee's army beat the Union army to the critical crossroads of Spotsylvania Court House, Virginia, and began entrenching. Fighting occurred on and off from May 8 through May 21, 1864, as Grant tried various schemes to break the Confederate line. In the end, the battle was tactically inconclusive, but with almost 32,000 casualties on both sides, it was the costliest battle of the campaign.
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