Beschreibung:

Lot of 26 letters, including 19 written by Mial Vincent to his father and older brother Alonzo, dating from August-December of 1862. Additional Civil War-date letters from a 20th Indiana soldier and a family friend are included, as well as late 19th-early 20th century correspondence with the family. Mial Vincent enlisted in northern Indiana in August 1862. The family was living in Hobart, Lake County. Vincent died of disease on Jan. 8, 1863 (official records indicate dysentery). Three letters are from G.N. Sprague, another family friend, including one dated Feb. 11, 1863, telling the Vincents that he would send Mial's belongings to the Hobart train station where they could pick them up. Vincent's letters are a bit difficult to read. He seems to be barely literate. There are no paragraph breaks and he jumps subject matter throughout - going from battle details to telling people to write to sending money home and back to the battle in a single sentence at times. However, it is the view of the typical soldier from farm country, with little "worldly experience." The trip through Indiana and Kentucky was probably more of the world than most of these boys ever saw. The 73rd regiment went to Camp Rose in South Bend for training and organization, then left immediately for Louisville, KY in expectation of a raid by Morgan. When the raid did not come, they were sent to Lexington, then back to Louisville, shifting their focus to Braxton Bragg. The first letters from Mial document these early movements. The one dated Aug. 23, 1862 is from near Lexington. There is also a note from George N. Sprague on the same sheet. In the second letter, dated Sept. 8, they have returned to Louisville to Camp Buell. He also speculates on whether there will be a draft or not. The third letter is dated only "September the [blank], 1862," but from about the middle of the month. He bemoans that they are in the middle of 80,000 men and can't get out to do anything, such as having their picture taken. He thinks they are getting more artillery on the 17th. He also discusses punishments for stealing, such as having to carry a log on their shoulders while marching. A few days later, Sept. 19, he adds a bit. They went to Louisville for a grand review and these country boys were "dumb struck" in Mial's words. He reports that a rebel force marched on Indianapolis, but were turned back by Union forces, suffering great losses in the process. His letter of Sept. 22 describes chasing Braxton Bragg nearly to the southern Kentucky border. The letter of Sept. 23rd continues the "chase." Sept. 29th he tells them that he is now the cook for their unit. He is clearly following the actions of McClellan on the peninsula (although most "information" is probably rumor). Numbers of dead and prisoners seems to be a bit inflated. The next couple of letters describe the Battle of Perryville, Kentucky (Oct. 8, 1862) He refers to it as the "Battle of the Springs" as one of the goals was to control Doctors Creek, one of the only sources of running water in the area. [Oct. 10] "We have been almost all over old Kentuck. We started from Louisville the first of October. We have been marching all of the time. I haven't seen any of the rebels yet but some of the boys have seen some of them....we could hear the cannons all day. When they had the battle to the Springs they fought all day and they still stayed there until we came up and they skedaddled. I tell you it was a fairly hard fight for they said that they would fight until every man was lost but they didn't stay quite as long as they thought they would....We lost about one thousand killed and wounded. The rebels loss we don't know how many they lost but they lost more than we did..." His letter of Sept. 13 was addressed to his older brother Alonzo. He regaled him with more gorey details: "We camp about half a mile from the battle ground. Some of the boys went over to the battle ground and they said that it look pretty hard to see the men