Chaplain William L. Hyde of the 112th New York Infantry Autograph Letter Signed Shortly Before the Battle of Chaffin's Farm. ...

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"I saw enough to satisfy me as to the cruelty of war. Only think what a savage way of reinforcing it is to open all the terrific artillery of an army like ours upon a city and upon the army opposed to it. Such an amount of iron never falls without leaving some mangled limbs and crushed forms in its course..."

Chaplain William L. Hyde of the 112th New York Infantry Autograph Letter Signed Shortly Before the Battle of Chaffin's Farm. Eight pages of bifolia, 4.875" x 7.875", "In the field near Petersburg" [Virginia]; September 26, 1864. Chaplain William H. Hyde of the 112th New York Infantry mustered into service with the regiment on September 11, 1862. Just before the Battle of Chaffin's Farm, Hyde writes to his wife, Elizabeth, and describes a salute of guns after General Sheridan's victory and the answering response from Confederate forces entrenched nearby. It reads, in part:

"When I last wrote you we were located in the fortifications around Petersburg. Since then we have been relieved and drawn back about two miles to the rear. So you see there is nothing more uncertain than military life... It is said there is some disagreements between Genls Meade & Butler, and that this is the cause of the withdrawal of our Corps. I don't know where we are to go... Saturday morning we celebrated the late victory of Sheridan. I think about 200 cannons & mortars opened at once from the Appomattox way round to the Weldon Road. I am glad you were not as near as I was. I am afraid you would have gone crazy. You never heard such a noise. It shook the ground and at times over about a mile from where I stood the air appeared to be full of bursting shells and then the rebs opened and roar & whiz and blaze & smoke and when a volley of cannon went off together, the air fairly serviced by crack with the sounds. I stood about fifteen minutes on the parapet just back of our tents and witnessed it, when the peculiar hum of some minnie bullets from the enemy came humming by and I thought that I was not ambitious to have a small hole made in me I had better get under the bunk. But I saw enough to satisfy me as to the cruelty of war. Only think what a savage way of reinforcing it is to open all the terrific artillery of an army like ours upon a city and upon the army opposed to it. Such an amount of iron never falls without leaving some mangled limbs and crushed forms in its course..."

This letter was published in Jim Quinlan's Armed Only with Faith, a compilation of Chaplain Hyde's correspondence and journals.

Condition: Smoothed folds.

More Information: William Lyman Hyde (1819-1896) was born in Bath, Sagadahoc County, Maine, to Henry and Maria (Hyde) Hyde (third cousin to Henry). After attending public schools in Bath, Hyde taught for three years at a military and classical school in Ellsworth, Maine, before entering a program of theological study at Bangor Seminary, graduating in 1848. The following year, Hyde began a seven-year tenure as a minister at Gardner, Maine, and later was pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in Dunkirk, New York, for a number of years. On May 4, 1852 he wed Elizabeth Rice, daughter of Warren and Mary Webster of Wiscasset, Maine. Hyde resigned his ministry in 1862 to serve as Chaplain of the 112th New York Infantry, a position he held until the end of the Civil War. The regiment was organized at Jamestown, New York, and mustered in for three years-service on September 11, 1862. They participated in sixteen battles, including Cold Harbor, Petersburg, Chaffin's Farm, Fair Oaks and Darbytown Road, Fort Fisher, and the Carolinas Campaign. The 112th New York Infantry mustered out of service June 13, 1865. After the war, Hyde served as a pastor in Ripley and in Sherman, New York, until 1874, when he became principal of the Ovid (New York) Academy and Union School. In 1884, Hyde moved to Jamestown, New York, where he was associated with the Jamestown Journal, of which his son was an editor. In 1866, Hyde published a book, History of the One Hundred and Twelfth Regiment N.Y. Volunteers which remains the only regimental history concerning the 112th Infantry. Jim Quinlan edited and published a collection of his correspondence and journals in 2015 in Armed Only with Faith.