Memories of the War [manuscript caption title].
Folio. 21 pages, approximately 3500 words, in pencil; accompanied by a letter to the editor of the Memphis Commercial Appeal, suggesting an effort to organize a Confederate reunion trip to Gettysburg (folio, two pages, approximately 225 words). Poor quality paper very browned and brittle, the text quite legible. An affecting personal manuscript memoir, written near the turn of the 20th century, by a private who served in Co. G. (Camden Rifles) of the 18th Mississippi Infantry, a unit raised in Madison County, Mississippi, under the command of Col. Erasmus R. Burt (mortally wounded at Leesburg in October, 1861) and immediately sent to Virginia where it participated in most of the battles of the Army of Northern Virginia. Maxwell includes notes on some of the battles, including Bull Run ("Captain Adam McWillie was commanding our Co. and was killed. John Tucker Bishop and a number of others wounded and died at Hospital"), Leesburg ("We fought Gen. Baker, killed him, and captured all the force, but we lost our Col. Burt and I lost one of my schoolmates Johnson Sutherland ... [H.F. Adams shot] and his gun kicked he and I into a ravine close by just at that time Col. Burt was wounded and thought we were too and said boys lets get of the field if we can. He died"), Malvern Hill ("2 brothers dead ... the bros. were Hansetts fell across each other. Baker, Barnett & C. Hix was wounded and died at the hospital. we lost heavy, but the victory was so complete in the main that Gen. Lee concluded to go into MD"), Antietam ("I put my hand on Gen. Jacksons foot in the stirrup as sat erect on his horse telling the men who had surrendered what to do. All this would have been grand to me if it had not been for the loss of another dear classmate Thompson Walker who was wounded and died at Charlestown, Va."), Fredericksburg ("the most complete victory Gen. Lee ever won ... we were well protected behind a stone fence. We never lost many but we killed dead on the field over 1000 men"), Chancellorsville ("Gen Hooker concluded he would go to Richmond ... history will tell you how he got there"), Gettysburg ("a private soldier does not see of know much about a fight that he is engaged in but we had been cut to pieces ... in fact there was but 8 out of 38 left of us"), Chattanooga ("We made a flying trip ... the Yanks did not know who we were nor where we came from"), Chickamauga ("we did not lose heavy"), and Knoxville ("we kept exchanging fire ... he missed me. I ran up to the pit and demanded them to surrender which they did and I captured two yanks with an empty gun"), especially mentioning by name officers and school chums who were killed or wounded along the way. The manuscript ends rather abruptly at Knoxville, before the unit returned to service in Virginia at the Wilderness. Along the way, Maxwell records several anecdotes that bring his narrative to life, an extended account of a day's trip back to an abandoned camp, with Yankee troops near by, to rescue the company's fiddle, an account of dueling Yankee and Rebel bands finally playing and singing together at Christmas before Fredericksburg in 1862, another extended report of aid given to a young soldier who was searching for his dead brother, killed at Chickamauga, and an account of two young ladies, met while traveling to Tennessee, promising to pray for his safety and sending him a letter, received while fighting at Knoxville. Maxwell closes his narrative in tragedy, relating stories of one friend being shot as a deserter on orders from Gen. Longstreet in Tennessee and another, at Gettysburg, pleading to be "put out of misery" after having "his entrails shot all to pieces. We have not discovered any indication of publication. For the 18th Mississippi, Dornbusch lists two publications, both by Major Lamar Fontaine, one of the Immortal 600, dealing primarily with his experiences as a prisoner of war. Item #53661
Price: $1,500.00