Beschreibung:

Lot of 3 ALsS. 1850-1857. Appointed to West Point from New York, Jonas P. Holliday graduated 24th in the class of 1850 and remained in the military service for life. As a young officer in the 2nd Dragoons, he was stationed initially on the Texas and New Mexico frontier and then, after a lengthy sick leave, he served at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, the Utah Expedition of 1857, and in the Dakota Territory. His later career, however, was marked by tragedy. As the Civil War began, Holliday was commissioned as Colonel of the 1st Vermont Cavalry and rushed into service well before he felt they were ready. Holliday fell apart. Being naturally of a nervous temperament and not very robust, according to a newspaper account, and troubled by fighting his southern countrymen, he shot himself through the forehead in April 1862, while standing on the banks of the Shenandoah River. He had served with his regiment less than a month. This small collection of three letters reveals a great deal about a recent West Point graduate and young officer on his first assignment. The first surviving letter, dated at Albuquerque Dec. 24, 1850, appears also to be the first written home after traveling west. Holliday explains that mail arrives only once per month and departs for the U. States just as seldom. He offers a classic of early western travel: I was sixty days crossing the plains, which would have taken us only forty but for an ox train we had to escort. We stopped at Las Vegas a week; one of the first settlements we come to & about seventy five miles from Santa Fé, to make the division of recruits & Horses, our command being merely a detachment destined to recruit the Dragoon Arm stationed in this Territory... In the city of Santa Fe I saw but one building of wood & that a rather poor affair, the buildings have a singular plan but one very well suited to the usages of the country [Holliday sketches a floorplan!]. The Mexicans are nearly all thieves... The people of New Mexico are generally small -- dirty -- lazy -- & worthless! Some however have become considerably Americanized in their dress, manners & customs. I have not seen one yet who can speak English with any degree of fluency from which, or rather because I am unable to speak or understand Spanish I been in some ridiculous positions. But I am learning. Some of the women are pretty, but is not at all common however to see such. The Mexicans are all very fond of Dancing & music; their fiddlers play with an enthusiasm equaled only by that of the Negro. They give Bailes or (Balls), the manner in which the invitation is given, I think quite original. The musicians who are engaged for the ball go through the streets playing a regular break-down, usually followed by a gang of urchins half clad or with not clothing whatever, showing their love for music by their grotesque antics & horrible nasal-twang accompaniments...? Datelined at Fort Worth, Texas, Sept. 15, 1853, Holliday’s second letter describes the general movement of troops in Texas to the Rio Grande in anticipation of Mexican troubles whether it will all turn out a false alarm or not, I am unable to say.. So far as I am concerned I would rather see a little gunpowder burned than not just to see whether I could stand fire. I have heard there will be one or two new regiments formed this winter... He also discusses his efforts to gain political support for a promotion in one of the new regiments, if formed, being nearly alone on base, and hunting on a grand scale. We had some very cold and stormy weather, a number of men were frost bitten, and our Horses and mules died, from cold & starvation so fast that we had to abandon wagons & saddles in the road. In my company I lost about thirty horses between Laramie and this place.... No Mormons have been seen since the Dragoons came into the country. They seem to have a very wholesome fear of Dragoons. Some of the Valleys here were cultivated by the Mormons last summer but everything was laid waste bef