Details
KANE, THOMAS LEIPER, Brigadier general. Autograph letter signed ("Thomas L. Kane") to William Biddle at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia; "Near Marvin" [Pennsylvania], 14 June, 1863. One page, folio, original stamped envelope addressed by Kane, two small holes at fold intersections, the first paragraph annotated in left-hand margin by the recipient.
Thomas Kane, the son of a judge of the U.S. district court in eastern Pennsylvania, had in his youth spent several years abroad, before being admitted to the bar in 1846. A convinced abolitionist, he resigned his office as U.S. Commissioner in his father's district when the Fugitive slave law was passed in 1850, for which act his father tried to have him imprisoned, citing contempt of court (the ruling was overruled by the State Supreme Court). Kane later became an active member of the Underground Railroad, and at the outbreak of the Civil War he organized his own regiment of woodsmen and hunters, the "Bucktails" in northwestern Pennsylvania. After being wounded and then captured at Harrisonburg in June 1862, he was appointed Brigadier General, but was removed from active duty in May 1863 by a bout of pneumonia. The present letter was written two weeks before Gettysburg, near his home in the town of Kane, which he had founded, and relates principally to the laying of the railroad through his property. He must have written it shortly before setting out on the long journey to Gettysburg, where legend has it that, still too weak to ride, he delivered to General Meade the message that the Confederates had decoded the Union cipher.
"...I find all our affairs in such an imbroglio that I cannot presume to decide what shd. be our course upon the most important matters--until I can collect my faculties and look much farther into things....Cornelius reports unfavorably of the proceedings of the railroad engineers... He thinks they favored the level just North of my place... Improvements made by the Penna. RR would in this case only benefit (directly at least) our property which lies North of this... Might it not be advisable for us to purchase a Warrant or so west of us?...".
Thomas Kane, the son of a judge of the U.S. district court in eastern Pennsylvania, had in his youth spent several years abroad, before being admitted to the bar in 1846. A convinced abolitionist, he resigned his office as U.S. Commissioner in his father's district when the Fugitive slave law was passed in 1850, for which act his father tried to have him imprisoned, citing contempt of court (the ruling was overruled by the State Supreme Court). Kane later became an active member of the Underground Railroad, and at the outbreak of the Civil War he organized his own regiment of woodsmen and hunters, the "Bucktails" in northwestern Pennsylvania. After being wounded and then captured at Harrisonburg in June 1862, he was appointed Brigadier General, but was removed from active duty in May 1863 by a bout of pneumonia. The present letter was written two weeks before Gettysburg, near his home in the town of Kane, which he had founded, and relates principally to the laying of the railroad through his property. He must have written it shortly before setting out on the long journey to Gettysburg, where legend has it that, still too weak to ride, he delivered to General Meade the message that the Confederates had decoded the Union cipher.
"...I find all our affairs in such an imbroglio that I cannot presume to decide what shd. be our course upon the most important matters--until I can collect my faculties and look much farther into things....Cornelius reports unfavorably of the proceedings of the railroad engineers... He thinks they favored the level just North of my place... Improvements made by the Penna. RR would in this case only benefit (directly at least) our property which lies North of this... Might it not be advisable for us to purchase a Warrant or so west of us?...".