2008-09
This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 8/31/2008
Nice set of seven letters of Elisha P. Comstock, who had service with both the 34th & the 186th New York Infantries during the Civil War, these letters span 1862-1865, and include: “...[5/17/62 on fine Patriotic Stationary]We was in front of Yorktown when I wrote to you before and now we are within twenty miles of Richmond and as soon as the bad Thirty Fourth gets in front of Richmond they will evacuate that place if they can and if they cna’t they may fight a little but not much...We are not quite as close to the Rebels now as we was at Yorktown. We are left back as a reserve. Our teams has just got up with the regiment. The artillery tear the roads up so the baggage wagons had hard work to get here...[3/20/63] I suppose you have heard about the 34th having a dirty camp. At least it was in the papers. While our Colonel was home on a furlough, Colonel John Beverly had command of the Regt....We had a major of the U.S. Army to inspecdt us and make out a report and our Lieutenant Colonel John Beverly did not know any better than to order the camp to be moved first before the inspection so the camp looked like a hog pen that never was cleaned but since our colonel has come back he has had the camp cleaned and inspected again and they made rather a different report about it...we have got a miserable lieutenant colonel, there is not a man in the Regt. but hates him...General Hooker is feeding his men now as if he had some sympathy for them...[9/18/64]You say you will take my U.S. Bounty and pay me 5 percent interest, you can have it and all other moneys that I want to send home...[10/12/1864]We are encamped two miles from City Point and fifteen miles from Petersburg. We are engaged in building breast works in our front...It seems to me that if the Rebels would attack us in these works that it would be nothing but fun for us to fight them... We are under General Benham. It seems just like home to be a soldier again. It makes some of the boys stick out their eyes to hear the gunboats a bellowing and the roar of the field artillery...[12/13/64]On Saturday at eleven o’clock were ordered to fall in line to go down to the station to see two men of Co. C of the 178th Regt. hung. Our Regt. was present, in all there were about ten thousand men present to see them hung. They belonged to New York. They were hung for deserting to th enemy. They were caught with a gang of guerillas. They were acting as spies and guerillas for the Rebs. It is quite a new thing to hang a soldier for desertion but they could not punish them too much....We went to guard a heavy supply train for the Fifth Corps...Some of the boys said they had tore up thrity or forty miles of railroad. Some said twenty...[3/30/65]On saturday morning last a part of our Corps had a short fight with the Rebels. ...I don’t believe the Rebels will take another fort from us but as it turned out it was a good thing attacking the fort for it was the means of licking them like the devil...The Rebels opened our lines with artillery and a little ways to our right and also throwed out skirmishers and advanced and our picket lines but did not get any fort & so after about an hours artillery firing they stopped their firing...There will have to be two or three hard battles before they will come to the right point for peace. But those battles are close at hand. They must be pretty closely cooped up now with Sherman at Raleigh and Meade and Sheridan here in front of Petersburg and General Ord on the James River...” All VG to Fine.
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