“I hope they will put that old rail splitter in the first sink they can find. He is the man that has killed or caused to be killed more good & brave men than this U.S. can ever boast of again…As soon as they commence to fight for the union of states and of hearts and not the Emancipation of slaves I will suffer all the hardship…[for] for my beloved country but not ...for the accursed negro."

Autograph letter signed by Cornelius Van Houton (1841-1916), Battery B, 1st New Jersey Light Artillery, to his father. Fort Warren, Virginia, 25 August 1864. 12 pages, 8vo, 5 x 8 in. With original envelope with Washington D.C. postal stamp.

Surprisingly vitriolic 12-page letter penned by Cornelius Van Houton of the 1st NJ Light Artillery that expresses his hatred of President Lincoln and abolitionism. Houton, a Union soldier, even goes so far as to say he is mad enough to “suppose my self a Rebel for awhile.”

Descended from an early Dutch New Jersey family, Van Houton was active in politics prior to the war, ironically campaigning for Lincoln in 1860 and serving as the corresponding secretary int he Lincoln & Hamlin Club. He entered into service as a private with aspirations of promotion, but was met with disappointment when he was passed over for corporal. He attempted to elicit favors from his local politicians to no avail. He was present with his regiment during most of their engagements including the Peninsula Campaign. He was ill in the fall of 1862 but rejoined them in time to participate in the fighting at Fredericksburg, the Mud March, and the Battle of Chancellorsville where the Battery was the first to turn their guns on Jackson. At Gettysburg, he was with them on Peach Orchard Ridge to turn back Longstreet's assault on Sickle's salient. Finally, he was with them throughout the Wilderness Campaign and at the fall of Petersburg, with another brief illness in 1864.

Filled with wrath and empathy for the Confederates, Van Houton writes to his father expressing, at great length, his deep hatred and disdain for Abraham Lincoln, his administration, and particularly his favorable treatment of African Americans: "Old Abe, the Butcher, will not promote a good and loyal private but if he can find a man that will kill a white man and lift a n----r to glory, then that old pirate will run him up anyhow. For the North, this war is played out. I see that a great portion of the people are against he administration. I hope they will put that old rail splitter in the first sink they can find. He is the man that has killed or caused to be killed more good & brave men than this U.S. can ever boast of again. Through his power, all this bloodshed is come about. He thinks too much of the n——r." He continues, “It is a pity he [Lincoln] hadn’t a wench—and a coal black one too—for a wife, and then he could have some of those miscegen children—the thing that he advocates so much. How he would like to see us soldiers marry n———.”

Van Houten’s feelings are so overpowering he admits to feeling closer to the Confederates: "I am so mad I don't know what to do. I have suppose my self a Rebel for awhile." Though he refocuses his patriotism for his country, he abhors Emancipation: "I love my country...now if it was for my country and my country alone I was fighting I would be willing to remain a private and fight all my life time, but as has come now to a speculative business." Continuing further: "As soon as they commence to fight for the union of states and of hearts and not the Emancipation of slaves I will suffer all the hardship and go through anything that is in human nature to go through I have already suffered and born the worst of hardship and am willing to bare more for my beloved country but not ...for the accursed negro."

Condition: old folds, otherwise very fine. Postage stamp clipped from envelope.

[Civil War, Union, Confederate, Slavery, Abolition, Enslavement, Emancipation, African Americana, African American History, Manuscripts, Letters, Documents, Ephemera]