Autograph letter signed by Samuel L. Gilman, Company F, 3rd Maine Infantry. Libby Prison, Richmond, Virginia, 1 October 1863. Two pages, approx. 3 x 5 in., on a separated diary leaf for the week of 17 August 1863.

While confined at Libby Prison, Lieutenant Gilman writes to his brother asking for “about ten dollars in green back,” explaining that he was “short of money, short of paper, and in fact of everything.” The brief note conveys the daily wants of captivity and the dependence of Union officers on outside aid.

Gilman, a native of Skowhegan, Maine, had entered service on 4 June 1861 as a sergeant in Company F, 3rd Maine Infantry. He saw early fighting at Bull Run and at Fair Oaks, where he was wounded on 31 May 1862. Promoted to second lieutenant in 1863, he was captured on 20 June during the Gettysburg Campaign and taken to Libby Prison. His captivity also took him to Macon, Georgia, and Columbia, South Carolina, before his muster out on 28 June 1864. In later years he served as Post Commander of GAR Post No. 157 in Walpole, Massachusetts.

Letters from Libby Prison are far less common than those from field encampments. Gilman’s appeal for money, written in cramped conditions on a salvaged diary page, is a plain but telling record of the realities faced by Union officers in Confederate hands.

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