American Historical Ephemera & Early Photography Online

4 pages, on bifolium, 4 7/8 x 8 in., creased along folds. Accompanied by postally used cover cancelled at Washington and addressed to Miss Hattie E. Rice of Boston, MA.

Alonzo Holland writes to his friend Hattie from the Lincoln Hospital at Washington, DC, while convalescing from a wound received on 21 June near Petersburg. He received her last letter late because he was not with his regiment and quickly explains that he was wounded in the right arm and kept at City Point a few days before coming to the hospital at which he currently resides on the 30th of June. He describes the event: "A ball passed through one arm between the elbow and sholder [sic], it just grazed the bone but did not hurt it (the bone) it was doing well and one side had healed up when the gangreen [sic] got into the other side and eat it out to the muscle and cords and made an ugly sore of it but it is doing well now and has began to heal again..."

He references a photograph Hattie must have sent with her letter, as he thanks her for it and lets her know that it seems as though she has changed in looks.

Alonzo Holland enlisted as a private on 18 November 1861 at Winona County, MN. He was mustered into Company K of the 1st Minnesota Infantry that same day, and remained with that regiment until he was transferred into Company B of the 1st Minnesota Infantry Battalion on 1 March 1864. It was with that unit that he received the arm wound referenced above on 21 June 1864 at Jerusalem Plank Road in Virginia. He eventually mustered out exactly 3 years after he mustered in, on 18 November 1864.

The 1st Minnesota is most famous for its charge on a brigade of Confederate soldiers during the Battle of Gettysburg, under the direction of General Winfield Scott Hancock, helping to secure the Union position along Cemetery Ridge.

The regiment also notably fought at the first battle of the war, First Manassas (though Holland had not enlisted by that time), earning commendations for its honorable conduct there, and at Antietam. In speaking of the 1st Minnesota after the war, General Hancock expressed his admiration for the regiment: "No soldiers on any field, in this or any other country ever displayed grander heroism."