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Columbia, Tennessee, 16 April 1865. 3 pp. in ink, bifolium, 8” x 5”. With small group of additional papers, described below. CONDITION: Very good, some separation along folds with 4 recent document tape repairs, chip at lower left of last page with loss to one or two words after the signature.

An impassioned letter describing the mood of the Union soldiers upon hearing the news of Lincoln’s death, and expressing their collective determination for revenge.

Written from Tennessee the day after Lincoln’s assassination, William Underwood’s letter to his wife Jane expresses the anger and sadness sweeping the whole camp—with the exception of “a few butternuts that seems to be mery overit but,” he writes grimly, “wo be unto them that open there mouths to rejoyce…” Much of Underwood’s letter is devoted to the assassination. Although he and his fellows are “nearly crasy for to get news” since “heavy rains raised the waters so high as to wash of all the railroad bridges and cars cant come further than Franklen,” they are already

determand for one Regment to kill evry man that rejoyces at his death and we will kill evry rebel that falls into our hands we will retaliate to the bitter end The boys shot one rebble Captain full of holes and put him out of misry This is just the comencement of trouble although the rebels is whiped and badly whiped but we will have revenge for the life of him who has saved this country for the past four years…

The rest of Underwood’s letter addresses household and family matters, including the childrens’ recovery from “hooping cough”; selling his interest in the mill “to a nice man”; and his suggestion to his wife (apparently never carried out) to “go west this fall.”

Together with Underwood’s letter are three post-war documents relating to his pension: an undated voucher and an 1893 pension certificate, both from the Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Pensions, and a 1907 typed letter, filled out in manuscript, from the Ohio Department of Soldiers’ Claims.

William Underwood was born in Ohio in 1828, and married Eliza Jane Smith in 1849. He enlisted on June 8th, 1861 as a Private in the “D” Company of the Ohio 25th Infantry, not long before the birth of his daughter Alice (or “Aly,” in his letter). On March 12th, 1862, he transferred into the Ohio 12th Light Artillery. He died in Ohio in 1911.

Item #7902

Price: $575.00