Beschreibung:

50 war-date letters, many with patriotic covers or letterhead, plus two discharge papers, five GAR/UVL items, and souvenir Gettysburg photo album. When George Bender enlisted on June 28, 1861 as a Private in Battery B, 1st Pennsylvania Light Artillery, he had no idea how rough army life would be. He almost died of typhoid fever. Then he was severely wounded at Second Bull Run, nearly losing a leg. While recovering in hospital, he was accidentally poisoned by hospital staff and nearly died. Despite being partially deafened from the poison and having a bad leg, he refused assignment to the Invalid Corps, and in June 1863 walked alone across Maryland and western Virginia to rejoin his regiment. Bender arrived just in time for Gettysburg, where the 1st Pennsylvania Light Artillery saw heavy fighting at Seminary Ridge, Cemetery Hill, and repulsing Pickett’s Charge. He went on to serve in most of the major actions of the Army of the Potomac, until being discharged shortly after Cold Harbor at the end of his term of service. He re-enlisted in February 1865 in the 2nd Veteran Volunteer Infantry, serving in the Shenandoah Valley for the rest of the war. He was discharged the second time in February 1866. Forty three of the letters in this archive are from Bender, with the remaining seven from his cousins in the same company, addressed to Bender’s family. Notable entries include a letter from the hospital in Washington D.C. on April 26, 1863, where he relates the story that the hospital staff now consider him un-killable: There is a nurse, he says “Bender, they can’t kill you… they knock your leg most off and you come all right again, then you take enough poison to kill ten men and you come all right again. They can’t kill you." On August 10, 1863, he alludes to Gettysburg in his letter home: I must tell you that we halve [sic] had some hard times since I got back to the Company and some very hard fighting to do and we done it well… On October 31, he recalls visiting the nearby battleground at Manassas and standing on the spot where he was wounded and the other three men of the crew were killed: I was on the very spot that I was wounded at Bull Run. The place looked very natural. There was three kild [sic] at the same place. They was buried at the same place they fell. On June 6, 1864, immediately after Cold Harbor, Bender writes home: We halve had a hard time all this month fighting every day this month, but as luck would halve it no one was kild and only one wounded. The last six letters from Bender were written during his service in the 2nd Veteran Volunteer Infantry, dated March 1865 to February 1866. Other war-date documents include Bender’s discharge from the 1st Pennsylvania Light Artillery, signed by Captain James H. Cooper; and his discharge from the 2nd Veteran Volunteer Infantry, signed by Bvt. Colonel M.V.B. Richardson, USA. Veteran’s items include a gold shoulder cord, three Union Veteran Legion reunion ribbons and one GAR Memorial Day ribbon from the New Castle, PA posts, and a small round photo in a braided frame, worn as a pin. Three post war-date items include two letters from a lottery company seeking to enlist Bender to advertise for them, and a letter to his father.