Inventory of the Benjamin M. Linsley Letters Ragan MSS 00110 ., 12 Dec. 1862-6 Aug. 1863
Title:
Inventory of the Benjamin M. Linsley Letters 12 Dec. 1862-6 Aug. 1863
Private Benjamin M. Linsley, a soldier from Connecticut, served (1862-1863) in Company A, 1st Battalion, 14th Infantry Regiment, Army of the Potomac. On 4 Dec. 1862, Benjamin Linsley's company left Fort Trumbull, Conn., boarding a boat called the City Of New York at New London, Conn., along with a group of deserters under arrest, who were landed in Jersey City. By the time they reached New York, Linsley suffered from sick stomach and severe pains in his head and neck. Linsley went by troop train to Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C., finally reaching Aquia Creek, Va., where he met up with his brother who served with the U.S. Army's 10th Connecticut Volunteers under Brigadier General John Gray Foster, and was wounded slightly in the Battle of Kinston on 14 Dec. 1862. Benjamin Linsley began his correspondence from camp near Falmouth, Va., which he reached with the sick and wounded by 20 Dec. 1862, having been unable to participate in the Battle of Fredericksburg. This Union defeat Linsley somewhat attributed to General Henry W. Halleck's failure to support General Ambrose Burnside's strategy. Linsley himself fought in the Battle of Chancellorsville, vividly describing the night crossing of the Rappahannock and Rapidan rivers on 27 April 1863, the confusion of the Confederate entrapment of the Union forces under General Joseph Hooker, Burnside's replacement, and Hooker's retreat back across the Rappahannock (6 May 1863). After this experience Linsley was again marooned in the hospital with neuraligia. In early June 1863, Linsley fell out of a summer march to Warrenton Junction, Va., seriously ill in the intense heat, and was taken from Ashby's Gap, Va. by train to the military hospital at Baltimore. These six letters, dated 12 Dec. 1862-6 August 1863, are from Benjamin M. Linsley to his friend Mrs. Lucy G. Palmer in Suffield, Conn.. Each letter is written in ink on both sides of a single folded sheet, except for the first one, which is on two folded sheets, sewn together in the center with cloth thread at some point after they were composed. All are addressed by Linsley from the camp near Falmouth, Va., where his regiment, the 14th Infantry of the Army of the Potomac was based, except the last one, which is addressed from McKinnis Hospital in Baltimore, Md., where Linsley was sent to recover from typhoid fever.
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