2008-09
This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 8/31/2008
War-date soldiers Autograph Letter Signed, 4p. octavo, October 25, 1861, and reads in part: “This country is pretty hard looking, it looks like the last end of the war...The fight last Monday, we crossed over the Potomac and was over there three days. The second day we had a little brush there was two thousand rebels rushed out of a piece of the woods and fired on our pickets and killed one of the Minnesotatf first and hit another in the should and wounded our general in the lefg but not very bad. And the pickets run and scattered all over...And then our battery opened upon them with only two pieces and they broke and ran like sheep and our bombs whistling after them and cutting them down very bad and our infantry never fired a shot but we have a company of sharpshooters in this brigade and they were there and they done bully. They would pick them about a mile off, their guns weigh seventy pounds and they have got globe sites and they can see the buttons on a mans coat a mile off...” VG. The Battle of Ball's Bluff, also known as the Battle of Harrison’s Landing or the Battle of Leesburg, was fought on October 21, 1861, in Loudoun County, Virginia, as part of Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan's operations in northern Virginia during the American Civil War. While a minor engagement in comparison with the Virginia battles that would take place in years to follow, it was the second largest battle of the Eastern Theater in 1861, and in its aftermath had repercussions in the Union Army's chain of command structure and raised separation of powers issues under the United States Constitution during the war.
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