2008-09
This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 8/31/2008
War-Date Union soldier Autograph Letter Signed, 3p. quarto, Fort Pickens, Florida, June 5, 1863, and reads in part: “...I received a letter from BrotherCarver [Smalley 12th Vermont Infantry] today with no date but mailed at Catlett’s Station. I hope they will not be brought into action, now his time is so near done, if it was not so unhealthy heree I should like to have him come down here into this Dept. and I don’t know but he had better any way to avoid the draft....I should not think strange if we had a chance to fight in this District after Richmond and Vicksburg is taken. This harbor is one of the finest in the world and they will have a large surplus force. Pensacola bay will hold the whole United States Navy easy. In relation to the Negro Question I think this that arming them and forming separate divisions from the whites is going to be one of the mos successful expirements of the war and it is what will break the back bone of the Rebellion sooner than anything else, they fight well are apt to learn and easily disciplined...the men such as Hunter who first introduced the subject will figure largely in the history of this war (if it should prove successful and I have no doubt it will) the prejudice which existed some months ago in relation to this question is fast dying out, they fought well at Port Hudson...” Fine. By the time of the American Civil War, Fort Pickens had not been occupied since the Mexican-American War. Despite its dilapidated condition, Lieutenant Adam J. Slemmer, in charge of United States forces at Fort Barrancas, determined that Pickens was more defensible than any of the other posts in the area. His decision to abandon Barrancas was hastened when, around midnight of January 8, 1861, his guards repelled a group of local men intending to take the fort. Some historians suggest that these were the first shots fired by United States forces in the Civil War. Shortly after this incident, Slemmer destroyed over 20,000 pounds of gunpowder at Fort McRee, spiked the guns at Barrancas, and evacuated about eighty troops to Fort Pickens. Despite repeated Confederate military threats to it, Fort Pickens remained in Union hands throughout the Civil War.
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