Details
[CIVIL WAR]. [BULL RUN]. Autograph letter signed ("Chas. Hungerford") to Adam Rickard, Sanitary Commission, Washington, D. C., Treasury Building, 1861. 4 page, 4to, ruled paper, in pencil.
A FRONT LINE SOLDIER'S ACCOUNT OF THE CARNAGE AT BULL RUN: "IT IS NOTHING TO TALK FIGHT BUT IT IS SOMETHING ELSE DOWN HEAR".
Hungerford was an unlettered soldier, but his lengthy report gives us a startling, vivid picture of both the fighting and the chaotic Union retreat. "I was thair on that field for 11 hours and sharper shoting and tawler running you never saw in your life." He was wounded in the leg, "just above the nee," and writes from a makeshift Sanitary Commission infirmary in the Treasury Building of Washington, D.C. He says "Its nothing to get hot shot but the worst is to get over it. It was a terble sight to see the wonded ded and dying...The bulits flew thicker and faster than the rain drops in a storm." He mentions Ellsworth's Zouaves: "Thay fought like wild beast of the woods...Now I tell you the folks up thair it is nothing to talk fight but it is something else down hear for they fight instid of talking about it. If I could see you I would tell you peticklers but it is hard to wright them for it makes me tird and our retreat from the field you could see wagons broken down the road strewn with rifles knapsacks cartridge boxes sowards and pistals it seemed as if the men kard nothing for thair guns...all they card for was to lighton thair load to get clear of the calvery that was faling up thair retreat."
A FRONT LINE SOLDIER'S ACCOUNT OF THE CARNAGE AT BULL RUN: "IT IS NOTHING TO TALK FIGHT BUT IT IS SOMETHING ELSE DOWN HEAR".
Hungerford was an unlettered soldier, but his lengthy report gives us a startling, vivid picture of both the fighting and the chaotic Union retreat. "I was thair on that field for 11 hours and sharper shoting and tawler running you never saw in your life." He was wounded in the leg, "just above the nee," and writes from a makeshift Sanitary Commission infirmary in the Treasury Building of Washington, D.C. He says "Its nothing to get hot shot but the worst is to get over it. It was a terble sight to see the wonded ded and dying...The bulits flew thicker and faster than the rain drops in a storm." He mentions Ellsworth's Zouaves: "Thay fought like wild beast of the woods...Now I tell you the folks up thair it is nothing to talk fight but it is something else down hear for they fight instid of talking about it. If I could see you I would tell you peticklers but it is hard to wright them for it makes me tird and our retreat from the field you could see wagons broken down the road strewn with rifles knapsacks cartridge boxes sowards and pistals it seemed as if the men kard nothing for thair guns...all they card for was to lighton thair load to get clear of the calvery that was faling up thair retreat."