[An extraordinary typescript archive of heretofore unpublished and unedited Civil War letters which reveal the abolitionist passions and growth of a young cavalry officer from his enlistment in the Army of the Potomac until his tragic death at the Battle of Five Forks. The young Guilford, Connecticut farmer & part time book salesman left his studies at Yale, serving and surviving the pivotal battles of the Second Bull Run, Antietam, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, the Wilderness, Spotsylvania Courthouse, and Cold Harbor, often while recording the everyday drudgery and horrors of the War, frustrations with the officers, and his own financial and personal struggles. These letters, documents, and diary entries were preserved and transcribed by the family of Capt. Uriah Nelson Parmelee of the 1st Connecticut Cavalry from the originals, many of which were later sold to Duke University as part of the Samuel Spencer Parmelee papers. Two hundred fifty-five of the letters and documents are numbered in ch

[Guilford, CT, & Washington, D.C.: Parmelee, (Typist or compiler not indicated), ca. 1892- 1911-1920]. 4to. 8.5 x 11 in. 354 loose typescript letters, documents & diary entries on 462 leaves (unbound and several stretching up to four leaves), typed on a few different bonded typing papers, including watermarked Monoplane Bond from Samson (introduced 1911), and Samson Aristocrat Parchment, with many bearing typing corrections, occasional erasures, or careful overtyping, occasional half-spacing of characters, with the majority appearing to have been the top sheet, while a much smaller percentage do not bear as deep of impression from the typewriter strikes, and appear to have been carbon copies (largely the diary entries, and a few of the letters written in 1892 & 1910 to and from Samuel Parmelee), and some still bearing minor creasing at upper fore-edges from occasional paperclips. All preserved in original Samson Typewriter Papers 20 LB. Aristocrat Parchment box, Art Deco lettering in silver on lid, paper label at fore-edge, all in excellent condition. These letters and diary entries penned originally by Uriah Parmelee (1841-1865) offer an unforgettable firsthand account of the Civil War, furnishing an exceptional unpublished memoir. His many postings allowed him to interact personally with most of the major figures in the Army of the Potomac, including General’s McClellan, Burnside, Hooker, Grant, Custer, & Sheridan. This fervent opponent of slavery, supporter of the Union, and admirer of Henry Ward Beecher, reports to his mother, Nancy Parmelee that he had joined the Union Army to fight for the cause Sept. 24, 1861. Typical of the majority of his letters written to his mother, these were often filled with introspection, doubts, hopes, fears, and a fervent intellectual passion, as well as concerns about her health and the running of the farm. While training with the Co. D, 6th New York Volunteers Cavalry commanded by Ira Harris, he expounds with a bucolic sensibility to her -- “in my tent, on my belly, sprawled out in my shirt sleeves, in Camp Scott just before sunset. . . of course you felt some motherly feeling on receiving my first letter, but I want you to be as much of a heroine as Hattie Hawley.” Should be noted that Harriet Ward Foote Hawley (1831-1886) was a Civil War nurse and journalist, and secretary and adviser to her husband General Joseph Hawley (1826-1905), cousin to the Parmelee’s. who was one of the few published women journalists at the time. Two months later he writes optimistically and cynically that “the South will not fight to the death: Union men will increase amazingly when our army opens a port or two for cotton of loyalists. . . the present contest will settle the question for some years at least as to whether Union or Secession, the Constitution or Rebellion shall triumph, but the great heart wound, Slavery will not be reached.” Against the backdrop of the struggles of organizing, logistics, and building the Union Army In the following months, Uriah despairs of the condition of his regiment, survives a bout of the measles, and complains to his brother Samuel. President Lincoln had initially downplayed the abolitionist aspects of the War, and the newly minted Cavalry orderly writes on Jan. 27, 1862 that “Capt. Lyon says we shan’t leave here till May he thinks. Inaction and Pro-Slavery are the watchwords. I’d like to wring Gen. McClellan’s and Gen. Franklin’s necks.” In the Spring of 1862, and with Northern morale and sentiment high, the Army of the Potomac began pushing down the Virginia Peninsula, hampered not only by geographical surprises, but by overcautious leadership. While maneuvering with the 6th NY Cavalry in April 1862 Uriah Parmelee writes of the operations around Yorktown and Fortress Monroe about “five wagon loads of wounded were taken down to Fortress, the firing continued all night. . . [and] that the contraband (slaves) is quite a feature in this part of the country. . . I am more of an Abolitionist than ever, right up to the handle. If I had money enough to raise a few hundred contrabands and arm them, I’d get up an insurrection among the slaves.” The frustration with the Peninsular Campaign and the Seven Days’ Battles boils over July 23, 1862 when he writes that the “movements of the Army of the Potomac constitute the most solemn of all farces. The blunders of its leadership have been not only grave, but positively ridiculous. . . No wonder the London Times pronounces the ‘strategy’ of Gen. McClellan ‘purely unintelligible’ . . . we lost all our positions.” As 1862 wears on, he writes Aug. 29 & Sept. 1, 1862 calling the Second Battle of Bull Run, or Second Manassas, “a contemptible affair the other side of Fairfax in which the New York 2nd Artillery and the 12th Penna. Cavalry covered themselves with shame. The 2nd ran without firing a shot and lost four pieces, two of which . . . were retaken by the 14th. Mass. Each day seems to add some new disgrace to our arms.” He also laments a week later of the poor showing of volunteers declaring that the 600,000 troops called for by Lincoln “should have all been here. . . their imposing front would have scared [General Stonewall] Jackson out of his boots.”The campaigns in Virginia resulted in thousands of freed slaves across the Virginia Peninsula and in the Shenandoah Valley, with over 40,000 flooding into Washington, D.C. as Abolitionist and Contraband Relief Associations organized across the area to aid them. As the debate about Emancipation raged in the North, Uriah expresses his fears that the abolitionist sentiment has weakened, hoping that if they cannot increase their actions against slavery that he hoped that he would “have the moral courage to desert it.” After Gen. McClellan’s removal following the Battle of Antietam, and before the debacle at Fredericksburg he writes “I have no faith to believe that Burnside will do a bit better than McClellan.” After the Battle of Chancellorsville he notes that “I have been spared through another battle. Have not once been touched, though hundreds have fallen around me . . . every little while the Rebs. commence vigorous shelling.” At Chancellorsville, Uriah gained notice in an official battle report, with the commanding General stating “I cannot close my report without at least a passing notice of my Orderly, Corp. Uriah Parmelee, Co. D, 6th NY Cavalry. When a new regiment (the 148th PA) broke under the first deadly fire, he rendered efficient and timely service in rallying the men and urging them on.” The only Army of the Potomac general Uriah seems to have approved of was Hooker, gushing May 8, 1863 that “Gen. Hooker[’s] strategy was sublime. He had attended to everything in person. Even our little brigade went into battle under his immediate orders. . . It was [O.O.] Howard’s Corps. of _____ Dutchmen, to whom the defeat is more owing than to anything else.” Following the Battle of Gettysburg, he writes July 13, 1863 to his mother “that the ball that came so near finishing me was meant for me in particular. . . the rebels had turned our right flank. . . just then and we were falling back for a time. The rebel line of battle was not fifty yards from us; could see the gray warriors as distinctly as was agreeable.”Following a furlough and end of his term of service in 1863 as a Corporal, he reenlisted as 2nd Lieut. of the 1st Connecticut Cavalry on March 16, 1864 under the recommendation of General John C. Caldwell, his former NY Regiment commander. As Gen. Ulysses Grant takes command, he writes that during the Battle of the Wilderness, his regiment was on reconnoissance duty and that General Sheridan personally ordered him “to fling out skirmishers in front across the road, etc., so that is all.” An exhausted General Burnside asked him about General Wilson, and offered water and food in June, 1865. His family received an Oct. 18, 1864 letter from Lt. B.B. Tuttle reporting that Capt. Parmelee had been captured by the Confederates under General Rosser while on picket duty, stating “they came very near getting the whole of our Regiment. Capt. [Parmelee] was not wounded; he is in good health. One of the men. . . tells me the Capt.’s voice could be heard above all the the firing and shouting of the Rebels, tell his men to fight to the last, never to give up.” Stripped of all his clothing, money and personal effects including his boots he marches for miles in stocking feet, and escapes two days later, eventually rejoining his Regiment. Subsequent to his capture and escape, he reports to his father Nov. 5, 1864 nightmares that include “dreaming my spirit was troubled and I thought I was a captive in the hands of the enemy and trying all manner of means to get out. Hunted was I and sorely oppressed, but I awoke to find myself happy and all right. I think in less than an hour after I dropped to sleep again I was a prisoner. . . “ Later he writes that during a meeting with General Custer, the General was wearing the seized overcoat and slouch hat of the Confederate Gen. Rosser (who had captured Uriah previously). He pens to his mother as part of an ongoing series of letters about homesickness: “I want to come home. I do. At times I am homesick as a child. . . but if this war should be over, this terrible bloody war, which brings homesickness and heart sickness and death, then I may come home then.”Tragically this young officer who had survived so many of the major Battles of the Army of the Potomac, would be the last Yale student to be killed in the Civil War. Several of the typescript letters from contemporary originals include the condolence letters to his family and sweetheart Kate Foote about his death on April 1, 1865 while maneuvering against Robert E. Lee the week before the Confederate Army of Virginia’s surrender at Appomattox. At the Battle of Five Forks, the 1st Connecticut under command of Col. Brayton Ives held the extreme right of Maj. Gen. George A. Custer’s Division, and they were dismounting and driving the Confederates before them. “As the shells came through our ranks we would all drop to the ground. I heard one coming and shouted ‘drop down Parm’ (that was a name we all called him). I threw myself on the ground, but poor ‘Parm’ was not quick enough, and he fell beside me without a word or sound.” Several letters detail the circumstances of the discovery of a diary lost by Uriah when captured in 1864 by the Confederates, abandoned in a rucksack, and finally returned to his brother Sam Parmelee in 1892. Much of this diary has been interleaved here into the typescript letters, and encompasses more passages than the portion reproduced by The Christ Episcopal Church in 1939. The diary entries offer extensive daily details not duplicated in Uriah’s letters, encompassing running messages, care of his mount, chopping wood, and many other mundane camp activities of Civil War soldiers. This typescript manuscript was prepared by the family in the years before and after the death of Uriah’s younger brother, Sam Parmelee, preserving them for family members, but also possibly intending to publish at some point. One similar set (254 letters) is preserved at the Library of Congress, interleaved similarly with leaves from the diary, as well as a few additional letters from extended friends and family. The LOC catalogue has also noted that the original letters had been sold by that time by Dorothy Byrd Davis (fl. 1950-1965) -- owner & operator of Petticoat Lane interior decorating, fabrics, and antiques in Guilford, CT. Unlike the LOC set, or the originals at Duke, the numbering of this set clearly extends to 255, with Nos. 115, 143 & 246 not marked, but one letter unnumbered & undated, and two others duplicated, and 184 with a 184A. The original letters held by Duke University under the Samuel Spencer Parmelee (1843-1915) papers, also include as well a number of other items from the family and Sam Parmelee’s business ledgers and correspondence, while a very successful harness, carriage, and wagon maker in Macon, GA following the War, and then later on Long Island, NY, and Guilford, CT. Noted Yale professor and historian David Blight, opens his lecture series on the Civil War every year with a brief recounting of Uriah Parmelee, and Uriah’s missives also inspired Prof. Randall Jimerson to become an archivist. We have been unable to find any edited editions of the letters, or reproductions of them, other than these two surviving typescript manuscripts prepared by the family and the originals held at Duke. This cataloguer struggles to understand how Uriah Parmelee’s story has not gained a wider audience, and this appears to be largely the result of the difficulty of access, with the originals not easily accessed at Duke Special Collections, and then having to be transcribed, or scanned, and seemingly a smaller similar set at the LOC. See: Uriah Nelson Parmelee, “The Civil War Diary of Captain Uriah Nelson Parmelee, a Son of Guilford, 1841-1865” (1939); Kate Foote, “Guilford and Madison During the Late War,” in Celebration of the Two Hundred and Fiftieth Anniversary of the Settlement of Guilford Conn. by the Towns of Guilford and Madison), pp. 187-198.