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EDWARD JOHNSON

Currency:USD Category:Collectibles / Militaria Start Price:1,500.00 USD Estimated At:3,000.00 - 4,000.00 USD
EDWARD JOHNSON
(1816 - 1873) Confederate major general who served with distinction in the Valley Campaign of 1862. Johnson led Stonewall Jackson's old division at Gettysburg, the Wilderness, and Spotsylvania where he was captured while defending the "Bloody Angle". After his release, he was captured yet again at Nashville and imprisoned at Fort Warren in Boston for the duration of the war. Fine content A.L.S. "Edw. Johnson Maj. Gl. CSA" written from captivity at Fort Warren, 3pp. 4to., Apr. 17, 1865. Two days after the death of Abraham Lincoln, Johnson writes from Casemate #5 in the bleak prison to his cousin, Emily Barton Brune in Baltimore, lamenting the death of the president. In part: "...recent events that have transpired in Va. and in Wash'n must have affected you as they have done us...heartfelt gratitude for your sympathy and your kindness in my misfortune...yr father, mother & sister who have been surrounded by such awful & trying events...I room in what is called a casemate in military parlance, a sort of subterranean abode, built of very solid masonry, but not shut out from the light of sun...I no doubt occupy the apartments formerly occupied by your friends [Baltimore Mayor George W. Brown, among others]...exercise at all hours of the day...we have been shocked by the terrible tragedy recently perpetrated in Wash'n, and all of us deeply and sincerely deplore it. Nothing at this time could have been more unfortunate for our unhappy country. All honorable men must feel as we do about this assassination. It must have [?] in the brain of the perpetrator. I feel confident that he had no aid or sympathy from honorable men of the South. They are not assassins and not the allies of assassins...". Johnson closes with warm sentiments and expressions of thankfulness to his much beloved cousin. Censor's signature at upper-left, folds, else near fine. With transmittal envelope, near fine.