Major General Godfrey Weitzel’s Wartime Letters
Heritage Auctions
A General’s Archive Earns Well
The Artifact
Wartime letters and other ephemera belonging to Major General Godfrey Weitzel
Condition
The papers are in good condition, some with minor separations at folds and soiling.
Details
In 1837, Godfrey Weitzel was two when his family emigrated from Bavaria to the United States and settled in Cincinnati, Ohio. In 1855, he was 19 when he graduated second in his class at West Point, where he returned four years later to teach civil and military engineering. During the Civil War, Weitzel held a variety of important positions. After he and his engineering company served as bodyguards for Abraham Lincoln at his first inauguration, Weitzel had assignments at Fort Pickens, Florida, and the Department of Ohio before being appointed in 1862 as chief engineer of the Department of the Gulf under Major General Benjamin Butler, in which capacity he aided Union forces in the capture of New Orleans. Promoted to brigadier general in September 1862, he commanded units in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas in 1863, before requesting to serve again under Butler, who had been reassigned to command in Virginia. In May 1864, Weitzel was made chief engineer of Butler’s Army of the James, which was charged with targeting Richmond. He was engaged in the fighting at Swift’s Creek, Drury’s Bluff, and the Bermuda Hundred Campaign in May and at Deep Bottom in August. (It was during this period that Weitzel, a widower, wrote the four lengthy letters to Louise Bogen, whom he would marry in 1865, that form the heart of the collection.) Promoted to major general in November, he soon assumed command of the XXV Corps, which was largely African-American. His troops were among the first to enter Richmond after its fall in April 1865. Weitzel remained in the army after the war, reassigned to the engineers. Working in Philadelphia years later, he contracted typhoid fever and died on March 19, 1884. Louise survived him, as did one of their three children.
Extras
In addition to Weitzel’s letters to his future wife, the archive included six photos (two of Weitzel, three of Weitzel and a comrade, and one of Louise), three letters addressed to Weitzel, period newspaper clippings giving details of activities by Weitzel and his troops, a four-page list of demerits Weitzel received as a cadet at West Point (with repeated citations for “trifling” behavior, e.g., laughing and talking at inappropriate times), and other miscellaneous items.
Quotable
On May 21, 1864, Weitzel wrote to Louise Bogen about recent fighting during the Bermuda Hundred Campaign: “I never have been under such fire nor ever seen such men slaughtered so. The rebels came on to my line in dense masses determined to drive me, and they were just piled up in heaps. During the night before I had made my men make log breastworks in front of their line, and there I made them take some telegraph wire and stretch it along my whole front near the ground, winding it firmly around stump &c…. Everytime they came to the wire as it was foggy they stumbled and fell over it and then I peppered it to them….”
Value
$5,676.25 (realized at Heritage Auctions in Dallas, Texas, in 2009). “This is an extensive archive that provides both the personal and military experience of this Union General,” a Heritage representative noted at the time.
