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JOHN B BACHELDER ALS, 8 separate pages, Dec, 1892, legal folio, Washington, to former Confederate...

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JOHN B BACHELDER ALS, 8 separate pages, Dec, 1892, legal folio, Washington, to former Confederate...
JOHN B BACHELDER ALS, 8 separate pages, Dec, 1892, legal folio, Washington, to former Confederate Major General Fitzhugh Lee (1835-1905), phenomenal content re Gettysburg. In small part, "...[George] Pickett's division was formed on the morning of July 3d in two lines of battle, which ran diagonally to the Union position...with [James] Kemper's and [Richard] Garnett's brigades in the front...and the center of [Lewis] Armistead...several battalions of confederate artillery...lay between the two armies...As Pickett's division advanced over this ridge the left of his line became first exposed...Kemper's advance was resisted by the Sixteenth Vermont...deplored as skirmishers...after a short but sharp encounter were brushed away...When Kemper's brigade again united with Garnett's...it changed direction to its right, and the brigade advanced to the stone wall, followed by Armistead's...whose men mingled with Garnett's and Kemper's...The two commands advanced...[Alexander] Webb's brigade was formed with the sixty-ninth Pensylvania...lying behide a stone wall...When the confederate line charged the union troops at the stone wall...fell back and formed behind the rear stone wall...large numbers of Kemper's men sought shelter...others advancing with Garnett's brigade, and threw themselves behind the wall (General Garnett was killed within twenty feet of it) where they engaged in a hand-to-hand conflict...Armistead's brigade...came quickly up to the support of Garnett's men...General Armistead, drawing his sword...placed his hat on its point, and raising it as he sprang over the wall, cried 'Boys, we must use the cold steel, who will follow me?'...He fell 33 yards from General Webb's line...Thousands fell dead or wounded..." Marginal chipping and general soiling, o/w VG. Boldly penned and easily read. This letter is published in "Bachelder Papers" (3 volumes by Ladd and Sauers, 1995). $1,000-1,500