Raynors HCA 2020-02
This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 2/27/2020
War-date Confederate officer's letter, 6 1/2pp. 8vo., written by Lieut. Mann Page [WIA Cedar Mountain, Va., Aug. 9, 62], 21st Virginia Infantry, "Camp near Mt. Jackson," [Virginia], [n. d., but late March 1862], to his uncle, David Copeland Randolph, reading, in part: "…we left Winchester (March 12th)…we had a very hard fight of it on the 23d inst. and I am truly thankful to say that although our little Regt. (not over 225 strong) was the first to get into and among the last to leave the fight. I was permitted to come out of it safe & sound. Our Regt. was placed…to protect McLauglin Battery (Col. Pendleton old Battery). Four of the Yankey Regts. charged it, but we drove them back with great loss. Our fight with the Regts. lasted until dark (1 1/2 hours)…we loosed killed & wounded sixty out of our Regt…I [am] in my official capacity [and] have an opportunity of knowing. What most probably will not be published [is that] all of your friends are safe…Col. Patton gave the order to fall back. I had around me some fifty men (composing parts of three companies who went into the fight with one officer apiece, two of whom were wounded & the other = the less said about him, the better.) of whom I had taken command, but being broken by the long march I had made that day I told them to move or they would be taken prisoners & that I was not able to keep up with them. This they did and I with one or two poor broken down friends started off with little hope of making our escape for we had to cross a field between two fires & after going about a mile and a half came up with Col. Patton, Capt. Irving & Archy Page who had some seventy five men under their command having halted to take up our wounded men in a house…we then marched all night until 2 oak. in the morning when we sent out a scout who came back and told us that the fires we had been flanking all night were our own…having marched about twenty miles over fences & creeks…Genl. Jackson told Col. P. that at no time during the battle of Manassas was the fight hoter or lasted longer…as to giving you a full account…I have found out this. That if a man…attend to his own business when…in a fight he will know very little of what is going [on] anywhere…they must have had twelve or fifteen thousand men in the fight…we delta with them so severely that they did not follow us until the next day…we are now sleeping out without tents the Genl. having ordered that we shall not have any more…in the morning the trees were covered in ice. Our surgeons…protested against the tents being taken away…and if the Genl. does not let us have them again he will kill more men than we lossed in the fight. Our army is the most northern in the Confederacy and have been carrying on an active campaign during last winter and Genl. Jackson thinks that the men who could go through that campaign can do without tents in the spring…Archy Page & Capt. Irving are well & acted with great gallantry…Mann Page…". Light silting, else VG.
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