Letter from a young teacher about a cousin and an Abolitionist neighbor who had enlisted in the Union Army.

Autograph Letter Signed. To Seraph, a school friend. 4 pp. 8"x5". Slight aging, light stain, folds, very small hole near center, but no loss. very good overall. Emmons was a 24 year-old unmarried music teacher. Her cousin, Charles Leonard, a Yale student studying to be a Doctor, "belongs to the 45th Regiment, now in camp near Boston. He had a furlough a short time since and called last Sabbath to bid me a last good bye. He looked quite well in his soldier suit and I can but respect him for leaving his studies and volunteering his services at such a time as this." She writes in a PS at the top of the letter, "our neighbor Mr. Chase has just Enlisted and starts tomorrow for Worcester. He is an abolitionist – and since the 'Emancipation Act' has felt it his duty to act his part". On September 22, 1862, President Lincoln announced the coming Emancipation Proclamation, which would free all the enslaved in the Confederate states at the start of the new year. Not many Northerners spoke of enlisting in the Army for the Abolitionist cause, while more than a few Union soldiers, if not rabid racists, were dubious of shedding the blood of their countrymen for the sake of Africans they considered their inferiors.