Description:

Gettysburg



Battle of Gettysburg Rages as Union Naval Surgeon Writes a Letter to his Brother-in-Law, Sadly Killed Before Receipt

Genl Lee and his friends have been riding rather promiscuously about the Pennsylvania turnpikes of late Which road he will finally take we all ‘want to know’ but no one can as yet tell us.”

 


Tragically, Philip Lansdale’s wife’s brother, the intended recipient of this letter, had been killed five days earlier. Despite the threats from the Confederate army nearby at Gettysburg, Lansdale writes jokingly about the invasion and reports that they are “as happy as crickets.”

 


Autograph Letter Signed, to William Luce, July 1, 1863, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. 4 pp., 5" x 7.875". Expected folds, very good.

 

Excerpts


“In Philadelphia we have made a move – Keeping house in the City – where, since Olivias recovery from a most dangerous illness we are all as happy as crickets.”

 

“Our residence is near the Navy Asylum, where I am on duty temporarily.”

 

“We all feel anxious about you and Frank lest some ill directed missile should give you a vulnus sclopeticum  The success of Banks will bring to us no result so agreeable as your return home, which we hope will follow that event.”

 

“Genl Lee and his friends have been riding rather promiscuously about the Pennsylvania turnpikes of late Which road he will finally take we all ‘want to know’ but no one can as yet tell us.”

 

“Mr. Blair was unpleasantly surprised by a sociable call of Stewarts Cavalry at Silver Spring, and the Laurel Hill stage was left standing in the road with its inside passengers, while the horses went to Dixie.”

 

“But we are told Meade is after them.”

 

Historical Background


Early in June 1863, General Robert E. Lee began moving his Army of Northern Virginia northward to Maryland and Pennsylvania to acquire provisions from northern farms and disrupt Union plans for the summer. In mid-June, his forces crossed the Potomac River into Maryland, while Union General Joseph Hooker’s Army of the Potomac followed, keeping itself between Lee’s forces and Washington.

 

Lee permitted General J.E.B. Stuart to take a portion of the Confederate cavalry and ride around the eastern flank of the Union army. Stuart’s cavalry even reached Silver Spring, the country estate of Francis Preston Blair, an adviser to both President Andrew Jackson and President Abraham Lincoln. Both Blair and his son Postmaster General Montgomery Blair fled their estates and returned to the safety of Washington.

 

Late in June, President Lincoln replaced Hooker with General George G. Meade in command of the Army of the Potomac, and Lee and Meade clashed at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, on July 1-3, 1863, in the largest battle of the Civil War.

 

Meanwhile, in Louisiana, General Nathaniel Banks had besieged Port Hudson, Louisiana, which together with Vicksburg were the last Confederate strongholds on the Mississippi River. After several failed assaults, Banks settled into a siege of the fortress in mid-June. In a bitter irony, Lansdale in this letter worries that “some ill directed missile” might give his brother-in-law “a vulnus sclopeticum [rifle wound]” Unknown to Lansdale, Luce had been killed five days earlier by just such a wound inflicted by a Confederate sharpshooter.



Philip Lansdale (1817-1894) married Olivia Luce (ca. 1821-1892) in 1840. He was appointed an assistant surgeon in the U.S. Navy in 1847 and promoted to surgeon in January 1861. He served aboard the USS Hartford in 1864. He became a medical inspector in 1871, and a medical director in 1873, before retiring in 1879.

 

William Luce (1825-1863) was born in Albany, New York. His older sister Olivia Luce married Philip Lansdale in 1840. Luce was a second assistant engineer in the U.S. Navy in 1843. He was disrated to third assistant engineer in 1845 and resigned in 1847. While serving with the topographical engineers in the spring of 1862, Luce was captured in the Lower Shenandoah Valley by Confederate Colonel Turner Ashby Jr.’s cavalry, and imprisoned at Salisbury, North Carolina for a time until exchanged in September 1862. While serving as an engineer for a New York naval unit in Louisiana, he was killed by a sharpshooter on June 26, 1863, during the Siege of Port Hudson.

 

 

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