2ND CONNECTICUT HEAVY ARTILLERY ARCHIVE, INCLUDING A SUPERB CEDAR CREEK LETTER ON SHERIDAN’S RIDE

“But by noon the news went along the lines, ‘Sheridan is here. Sheridan is here.’ And he was here. And such cheers as you never heard went up as he rode along the lines & said, ‘Boys, you shall camp tonight just where you woke up this morning.’”

Grouping featuring eight war-date letters signed by Theodore F. Vaill of Company A, 2nd Connecticut Heavy Artillery, together with one war-date letter signed by his brother, Charles B. Vaill, all addressed to members of the Vaill family. Various places, September 1863–October 1864. Approximately 23 pages, mostly 8vo, several with accompanying covers. The outstanding letter, dated 21 October 1864, contains an extensive and highly evocative account of the Battle of Cedar Creek, including references to George A. Custer and Sheridan’s dramatic return to the field.

Theodore Frelinghuysen Vaill (1832–1875), of Litchfield, Connecticut, was the son of Rev. Herman Landon Vaill (1794–1870) and Flora Gold Vaill (1799–1883), and brother to at least seven surviving siblings. According to HDS, he enlisted on 13 August 1862 as a private in the 2nd Connecticut Heavy Artillery, a regiment originally organized as the 19th Connecticut Volunteer Infantry. Vaill rose steadily in rank, receiving promotions to sergeant major, first lieutenant, and adjutant by 5 March 1864. After garrison duty at Forts Worth, Williams, and Ellsworth in the defenses of Washington, D.C., the 2nd Connecticut Heavy Artillery joined the Army of the Potomac in May 1864 and entered Grant’s Overland Campaign, serving in major engagements at Spotsylvania Court House, Cold Harbor, Petersburg, and Cedar Creek. Vaill was wounded at Petersburg on 25 March 1865 and was mustered out on 18 August 1865 at Fort Ethan Allen, Washington, D.C. After the war, he authored the History of the 2nd Connecticut Volunteer Heavy Artillery, published in 1868, and later served as editor of the Winsted Herald.

Vaill’s seven-page letter of 21 October 1864, written two days after Cedar Creek from “Hdqrs. 2d C.V.A.,” offers a vivid and unusually detailed account of the battle. He begins with the stealthy Confederate night approach over the mountain: “from eight o’clock that night until the next morning they were coming down by sheep tracks and blind ways ‘Indian file,’ and noiselessly forming their battalions at the foot of the mountain.” He then describes the opening of the attack, with its “furious canonnading just before daylight,” followed by sudden confusion in the Union rear as ambulances, orderlies, artillery, cavalry, sutlers’ wagons, and mule teams crowded the roads. “The rebel shot fell like hail along our lines and horses & men went down everywhere. Still our lines remained firing into the mist, the new risen sun, huge & bloody seeming to be in more ways than one on the rebel side—for we were fronting directly to the east—and if ever there was a time when the noblest cause of latter days seemed forsaken of God, that was the time.” After the Union line was flanked and forced back, Vaill recounts with palpable excitement Sheridan’s return to the field and the surge of morale that transformed retreat into victory: “For miles & miles, for hours & hours, they [the Confederates] fled from position to position & we chased them—their dead & wounded & prisoners lying all over the country, until every regiment of infantry in our whole army halted & went into camp on the precise ground it had left in such haste in the morning....”

It is a vivid and engrossing battlefield narrative, already displaying the storytelling gifts that Vaill would later bring to his published regimental history.

Additional letters include: a 25 September 1863 letter to his mother discussing his promotion to sergeant major and the duties attending that office; and a 15 October 1863 letter to his brother Joe describing the regiment’s division among Forts Worth, Williams, and Ellsworth, accompanied by a simple sketch, and noting cannonading that was “appallingly heavy, rapid, & near...probably at Manasses, or somewhere that way,” likely referring to the Battle of Bristoe Station.

[Civil War, Union, Confederate]  [Manuscripts, Documents, Letters, Ephemera, Signatures, Autographs]

Letters generally in good condition with expected creasing and toning.