Civil War Diary Of Oscar Pecoy

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ISBN 13 :
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Download or read book Oscar A. Langworthy Civil War Letters written by and published by . This book was released on 1861 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection contains fifteen letters. Twelve of these letters are transcribed. Oscar wrote 13 of the letters, addressed to his father. One letter dates to December 1861, where Oscar mentioned that he had been sick in St. Louis, but had since joined his regiment at Camp Elbert, near Rolla, Missouri. Here he also mentioned that he believed the war would most likely be longer than necessary and would lead to a war "with great powers." Four letters date to 1863, when Oscar was stationed in Tennessee (Forts Henry, Heiman, and Donelson; Murfreesboro) and Alabama (Huntsville). He talked about marching through Tennessee and the capture of some Confederate troops. He also petitioned the state of Iowa to become a Second Lieutenant, to which he was appointed in June. By this time though he was weary of his position and asked his father to use his influence to obtain a position for him either in the State Department or another cavalry regiment. He also mentioned that he believed the war would not last much longer and wondered if the South would ever be able to return to its former greatness after the losses and damage it had suffered. Eight letters by Oscar date to 1864. In March he was in Cairo, Illinois, on his way to Camp Patrick, Nashville, Tennessee, where he would stay for the remainder of the year. He did not take part in any of the expeditions during the summer, when the regiment went into Alabama to secure areas that General Sherman could not take during his march through the South. Oscar became particularly angry about one incident, the Battle of Brown's Mill on 30 July 1864. Under General Edward Moody McCook, a unit of combined forces tried to take the town of Newnan, Alabama, still controlled by Confederates, and failed. The combined units then met with Confederate soldiers after leaving the town at Brown's Mill, during which the Fifth Iowa Cavalry sustained heavy losses. Oscar believed that General McCook sacrificed the Fifth Iowa Cavalry to save his own men of the Indiana Cavalry. During this time, Oscar was also trying to get discharged, believing that he was wasting his time in the army, when he could be securing his future with a career, home, and family. Specifically, he wanted to obtain a leave of absence to go to Washington to visit his cousin, Noah Smith, who worked as a secretary to the Secretary of War, to obtain a discharge. Instead, he was promoted to First Lieutenant of the Fifth Veteran Cavalry, a consolidation of the Fifth Iowa Infantry and the Fifth Iowa Cavalry as both did not have enough men. During October 1864, Oscar took part in a scouting mission in Tennessee. He did not meet with any guerrilla bands during this scouting mission, though he did almost catch a leader of one of the guerrilla bands. One letter not transcribed is by Oscar to his father dated 2 December 1863. This letter was written in a cross-hatch style (overlapping going horizontal and then vertical). In this letter, Oscar asked his father to send clothes, mentioned that he needed money (but would not directly ask his father for money), and wanted his father to use his influence to get him out of the Fifth Iowa Regiment. One letter not transcribed is from the S.P. Adams, Captain and Provost Marshal of the Third Congressional District of Iowa dated 6 February 1865. Adams authorizes the visit of Lucius to visit Oscar. One letter not transcribed is a business letter addressed to Lucius H. Langworthy on freight shipped during 1863.