...Denver which is as ever the "murderous city"...

Autograph letter signed by Albert Wesley Pillsbury to Marion C. Chamberlain. Lake Gulch, Colorado Territory, 3 & 16 November 1861. 4 pages, 4to, on illustrated letterhead featuring Lady Liberty printed in red and blue.

A fascinating frontier letter written from the Central City Gold Mining region of Colorado Territory at the outset of the Civil War.

Alfred Pillsbury (1834-1914), originally from Winnebago County, Illinois, writes home to his sweetheart, schoolteacher Marion C. Chamberlain (1836-1872). Opening his letter, he laments his loneliness out west but recognizes that so many fighting at war have it worse off.

Pillsbury's letter is full of dramatic detail revealing the ever-present danger of life on the frontier. He continues his letter nearly two weeks after he began, excusing the gap as he "was called off to engage in hunting up a horse thief & did not return until the day before yesterday."

He continues with details of the attempted murder of Joseph Ziegelmuller, Captain of Company 1 of the Denver City Home Guards, over a financial dispute: "While I was at Denver which is as ever the 'murderous city.' Last week there were eight men shot there of which two are dead. They have had considerable trouble there with the soldiers. A good many of my acquaintances have enlisted. One of the murderers now confined in the Denver jail awaiting his trial I am well acquainted with. I call him a murderer although he did not kill the man he shot - but it will go hard with him as the man he shot was a captain of the Home Guards there. He was one of the last whom I should have thought would have shot a man. But tis said that he was under the influence of liquor. Another lesson to those who are tempted to raise their pleasures and enjoyments, or drown their sorrows by using the 'sparkling wine.'"

Pillsbury also criticizes Territorial Governor William Gilpin's military spending:
"The Governor of this Territory is going to a great expense in the War Department and it is generally thought by citizens that it is needless. Undoubtedly upon examination there will be found a great deal of corruption in government affairs here. I sometimes think that our glorious government is fast falling to ruin...The ones in whom we placed the most confidence are, it seems, trying to use it to the gratification of their own desires. It seems that they are standing still before the traitorous enemy, and when there is a sacrifice made, it consists of our bravest and best men. We have not many [Nathaniel] Lyons and [Edward D.] Bakers to dispose of at this critical period."

Sometime after this letter, he married the recipient, Marion Chamberlain, and the two moved to Montana Territory by 1870.

A fine letter demonstrating the rough and tumble life in Colorado Territory.

References: William Clarke Whitford. Colorado Volunteers in the Civil War. Denver: State Historical & Natural History Society, 1906. p. 44

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

Small pinholes along original folds.