Description:

CONFEDERATE BUSHWHACKER WRITES A LAST LETTER TO HIS MOTHER: 'I AM TO BE SHOT AT TEN O'CLOCK TODAY'
CHARLES BROWNLEE (circa 1838-1865) was an attorney from Moniteau County in central Missouri who served as a second lieutenant under Lt. Col. John Schnable of Schnable's Battalion, Missouri Cavalry. During a long and destructive 1863 raid through Missouri, Brownlee was captured and charged with murder and robbery as a 'bushwhacker'. Sentenced to death by a military commission in Boonville, he escaped before his execution and rejoined Shelby's Iron Brigade as a lieutenant. At war's end, he was arrested and executed under the 1863 charges. The execution was controversial at the time, as it seemed to violate the amnesty granted to surrendered Confederate troops. Brownlee writes, in part: '...Dear Mother, I am yet liveing and well, but ere the sun will have reached its midday throne my spirit will have gone to God who gave it. I am to be shot at ten o'clock today, according, as I am told, to the sentence of a commission which tried me at Boonville in 1863, but I do not fear to die. I have faced a thousand of the enemy's muskets and have escaped unhurt, but the few I must shortly meet will end my life and troubles. I hope you will not grieve to much over my sad fate, for in a few years at most we will meet again. . . . I have done nothing for which you need ever be ashamed. Those principals of honor which it was ever your care to instill into my bosom I have always cherished and practised but the close of this revolution has drawn me into its vortex and I must perish...I am in the hands of my enemy and must abide his mercy, be that great or small, though they have treated me with kindness...When I last saw you I hopes to see you once more at least...but that meeting must be in the other world...Good by to you all, Charles Brownlee'. The letter is consigned from a private collection. It has been cited in Guerrilla Warfare in Civil War Missouri, page 403.

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June 27, 2025 10:00 AM EDT
Elkton, MD, US

Alexander Historical Auctions LLC

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