Auction Date:2011 Feb 09 @ 19:00 (UTC-05:00 : EST/CDT)
Location:5 Rt 101A Suite 5, Amherst, New Hampshire, 03031, United States
ALS - Autograph Letter Signed
ANS - Autograph Note Signed
AQS - Autograph Quotation Signed
AMQS - Autograph Musical Quotation Signed
DS - Document Signed
FDC - First Day Cover
Inscribed - “Personalized”
ISP - Inscribed Signed Photograph
LS - Letter Signed
SP - Signed Photograph
TLS - Typed Letter Signed
Union general who was killed in action at the Battle of Perryville during the Civil War. His brother was also killed during the same war, making the Terrills one of the few sets of American brothers killed in action while commanding brigades. Ironically, they were on opposite sides in the conflict. ALS signed “William,” four pages on two adjoining sheets, 8 x 10, August 15, 1859. Letter to his brother, most likely to his brother George. In part: “Your very welcome letter of the 2nd inst. I received this morning on my return from the Mountain House. I assure you I am glad that you have not neglected me intentionally. I fully expected a reply to the letter I wrote you when at home. What I wrote to you I considered my duty. And I feel assured you could not take exceptions to anything I wrote-but I feared you might consider me rather presumptuous, and therefore heat me with silent contempt. I had concluded anyhow to write to you again this week. I shall never permit anything to estrange me from my brothers and sister. I think of you all often and my chief regret is that I am unable to minister to your happiness in any way. I am glad that Father is not to marry Mrs. S. and yet it makes my heart ache for his solitary condition. If I were not a man I should go and live with him … I am to go to Charlotte Harbor again this winter, and I assure you I feel badly about it - for I am tied there for six months and cannot return in any emergency … I have but little leisure now. As I am absent all day from camp (observing). We dine at 8 PM breakfasting at 7 AM. If you see I am on my feet 12 hours. At night I have writing to do. So you see that I am as busy as if I were an ‘MD.” … Last week I was at the Catskill Mountain House…the scenery from the Catskills is grand-within vision is an area of 12000 square miles. The White & Green Mountains are visible. The Hudson looks like a tiny silver rivulet-And the vessels like white butterflies resting on its surface. Read the description of Satan tempting our Lord and a view from the Catskill Mountains will give you an idea of the ‘Glories of the World’…” In very good condition, with intersecting folds, scattered toning, heavier along folds on second page, and Terrill’s signature a bit cramped.
William Terrill—born in Virginia and an 1853 West Point graduate—was faced with a moral dilemma at the onset of the Civil War. Like thousands of other Americans, both North and South, Terrill was trained for a career in the US Army...he could not go back on his pledge to the Union. Terrill’s father, a prominent attorney and Virginia legislator, was enraged by his decision, once writing, ‘I am overwhelmed by the position you have taken. It is the bitterest cup that has ever been commended to my lips. You are surely demented…you will never be permitted to revisit your native state but to die.’ Family bonds were further strained by the decision of Terrill’s younger brother, James, to join the Confederacy. More than a decade before the conflict, Terrill’s fondness for the North is on display here as he fondly writes of the Catskill Mountains and New York—in addition to his widowed father. The additional reference that he is “as if I were an ‘MD’” certain means that the original recipient of this letter was his brother, George Terrill, who would become a Confederate militia commander and a survivor of the Civil War.
Auction Location:
5 Rt 101A Suite 5, Amherst, New Hampshire, 03031, United States
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