During The Battle of Fredericksburg With The 5th US Cavalry

This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 8/31/2008

A rare war-date Union cavalryman's letter written by Corp. George T. Crawford, Co. C, 5th U.S. Cavalry", 3p. quarto, Cavalry Detachment, 1st Cavy Brigade, Camp near Brookes Station, Va., December 18, 1862, and reads in part: "…Every week brings to me the S.T. Farmer, and my first thought is to look at the deaths, to see if you are still alive. O! Mother how I wish I could help you, but the day comes and goes and no signs of the paymaster; we have now six months pay due us, amounting to over sixty dollars, hard earned money, but I cannot forward to you the first penny to help you in your distress…Forgive me Mother, for indeed it is not my fault…Fifty years of sorrow has afflicted you. Tears have been spent to make me happy, by sacrifices to yourself, a mother's kindness? O! how it grieves me…you have heard me praised by my officers as a good soldier, and I should feel mortified to be stamped on less but less as a son. The late battle at Fredericksburg has caused the death of many an honest man but I was not called into action, but for four days stood at my horse's head, ready to mount him and be off for the battle field should I be required. The day before the battle I saw all of my friends from Jamaica who belong to the 40th [New York] Mozart Regiment, but if they are all alive now, is more than I expect, the slaughter was terrible. The papers have modified it ten fold…I believe there has been an order published, that all men enlisted for 5 years in 1861, are to be discharged in three years, therefore I have but sixteen months to serve…Day before yesterday some of our men got some of the tobacco the rebels threw into the river & they gave me a piece, and I have been really more cheerful over this three inches square of tobacco & a corn cob pipe than I have been for months…Our Company is now body guard for Genl Averell…" VG. Crawford served throughout the war in the 5th and was killed during a bitter skirmish with rebel cavalry at Manassas Gap on July 21, 1863.

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