Civil War Missouri - Letter - Guerrillas and “devilish
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Author:
Title: Letter - Guerrillas and “devilish Secesh” in a violent border state
Place Published: Philadelphia
Publisher:
Date Published: 1862
Description:
Autograph Letter Signed "Edward". Philadelphia, Aug. 31, 1862. To his father. Probably in Vermont. 4pp.
The writer had just come north from Ralls County, Missouri, where some of his family still lived, his brother having arranged for the father's cattle, horses, hogs, oxen, wagons and furniture to be sold at auction in Hannibal.
In Hannibal "things are in a bad fix, but the only way to do now is to wait patiently for a change in the political affairs in Missouri. Valuable property there is absolutely worthless, i.e. to sell. I was offered 640 acres within a short distance of Wm.'s & just as good as his for $1,000....I consider our interests all one. I am a Union man - soul & body,,," If another brother was drafted into the Army, he offered to go in his place, "for I can get along much better than he, and escape a thousand troubles that he would suffer by. ...Oh this is a most Horrible, horrible War, but it will purify this noble Country in the end and make it worthy of its founders." He was particularly concerned that his sister should not be persuaded to join his brother in Missouri, "where he is surrounded by guerrillas and in the most lonesome place in the world, no society but a rough sort of secession blarney & boasting class of ignorant people. I cannot bear their spirit - it is Hellish and Devilish of the very worst kind. It seems as if the very Devil had taken possession Secesh..."
The hotly contested border state of Missouri was full of both Union and Confederate sympathizers who, when this letter was written, were fighting a bloody, guerrilla war of their own, an internecine conflict of unrestrained violence and political turmoil which continued throughout the nation's larger Civil War.
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