'Dear Folks' - 8 Funny, Shocking, and Strange Snippets from Civil War Letters

 

Here are 8 funny (and some bizarre) snippets from letters that soldiers on both sides of the War of the Rebellion wrote to the folks back home. [Other than punctuation or bracketed terms for clarity, the words are theirs – unchanged.]

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This excerpt is from Absolom A. Harrison, Company D, 4th Kentucky Volunteer Cavalry Regiment. It appears that Absolom and his brother Jo got caught up in the recruiting fervor and enlisted in the U.S. Cavalry. That must have been a strange regiment. By the way, his wife, Susan has a very interesting pedigree. [see ** below]

December 12th, 1861 Dear Wife, I take my pen in hand to write you a few lines . . . I have enlisted and been sworn in . . . You must do the best you can and take care of the children and if any of you get sick let me know it immediately . . . This is a big day with us as one Captain is to be married today and two other officers are to fight a duel today . . . So nothing more at present but remaining your affectionate husband until death. A. A. Harrison P. S. Tell Martha, Jo is well [1]

Absolom was medically discharged a year later. About the same time, his brother, Jo died of disease in a military hospital in Nashville. (I wonder if he was still married?)

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William Norton, Co. C, 7th Connecticut Volunteer Infantry, wrote to his mother from Hilton Head, South Carolina, October 8, 1862. (He was quite the spoiled narcissist!)

My Dear Mother, I thought I would write you a few lines. I am sorry to tell you I am not very well at present. I was taken sick about three weeks ago with chronic diarhea . . . I have been pretty sick but I am getting better now . . . I would like to have you send me some things which will come better in a barrel than in anything else. I should like some good fresh eggs, a bottle of preserves, some lemons if you can get some good ones, some ginger root. Some butter would be very nice, it will come better in a tin can than in anything else. I would like some sugar too. I wish you would send a bottle of good Cider Vinegar also-I would like some pickled onions, and some dried apples. Some prepared chocalate would taste(?) first rate, as we do not get good tea and coffee.   A towel and a couple of handkercheifs will be very acceptable also. If there is any room for anything else I wish that you would fill it up with onions and good sound apples that are not quite ripe that they will keep better . . . Please send it as soon as possible.

 In spite of all that, our boy Willie STILL wasn’t done with his requests!

I have not heard from you since I have been here but should like to do so every mail. If convenient please send $5.00 the next time you write . . . and believe me to be – Ever your aff son, William Norton [2]

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Here’s the Confederate version of “Willie” Norton. However, William “Billy” Elliott, Co. A, 11th North Carolina Volunteer Infantry Regiment was far less demanding, and he spread his "wants" among more family members. And at the end of his " (and he even asked how the family was doing)!

December the 9 1862, Franklin Depot Virginia – Dear Father I take my pen in hand to rite you a few lines . . I got my shirt & drawers you sent . . . you sed you was going to send me a nother box.  I was glad to hear that.  I want you to sent it with out fail the other one was so good it has put me in the notion of having a nother box.  tell George to put me in a poke of groun peas mother I want you to send me some plan thread and a good big needle in the box . . . nothing more only rite soon. William Elliott [3]

Unfortunately, Billy Elliott was killed seven months later during the first day’s action at Gettysburg.

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2nd Lieut.John D. Damron, Co. K, 49th North Carolina Volunteer Infantry Regiment was VERY irritated when he wrote this scathing letter to the folks back home.

Fredericksburg, Va. Dec. 17th, 1862 – Dear Father, I had concluded that I could not write to you any more until I had received a letter from home . . . As I have given up all idea of receiving a scaratch from your very reserved pen. You certainly should be appointed Superintendent over some asylum of mutes, as I verily believe your experience in such matters would be highly beneficial to such an intitution [institution] . . . [and at the end of his letter] . . . Tell sister Ann I got that letter she wrote me last week, but my eyes were so bad that I could not make out anything that was not in it. Tell Sallie to write. She owes me one. All of you write, or you may consider this my last. I never expect to get home again at all. Furloughs are out of date. They would sell for 500. Money is worth nothing & nothing is worth everything. My love to all. Your son, affectionally, John D. Dameron [4]

I certainly wouldn’t exactly call that an “affectionate” letter, but Damron resigned from the service later that same month. His resignation was accepted – a rarity – because, as his commander wrote, “he will whenever he can get it, liquor to excess.”

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Now THIS soldier is a Shakespeare wannabe! Sgt. William H. Gardiner, Co. K, 4th Maine Volunteer Infantry Regiment, wrote the following in the opening lines of a letter to his sweetheart, Carrie Patterson, in Belfast, Maine – September 6, 1862:

Heaven bless the hour that saw you seated penning an epistle [letter] to a poor benighted mortal like myself. Receivede the very hour that we arrived here, foot-sore and weary, its effect was like an electric shock, not literally I do not mean, as putting one in pain, but giving me new life and with more grace to bear my trials and sore distress: and that night saw me lay down in the bosom of Mother Earth, calmly, and grateful that the Almighty had put it into the heart of one oft remembered friend at home, to give some tangible evidence that his poor sin - burdened piece of clay was not wholly forgotten . . . 

Quite the romantic dramatist. Unfortunately, war was hard on idealists, and Gardiner was no different. The tenor of this June, 1863, letter is decidedly different:

 . . . I am unable to write decently at the present time. My brain has not yet recovered from the effects of the violent concussions of the bursting shells and artillery neither are the conveniences for writing very extensive as you can perceive. Therefore I curtail the dimensions of this and close with the hope of hearing soon from you. [5]

Sadly, Gardiner never had the opportunity to write again. He was captured at Gettysburg a week or so later and died of scurvy at Andersonville Prison in Georgia on August 16, 1864.

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The following is a letter excerpt I’ve had in my files for a long time. Unfortunately, I neglected to document it – author or unit – at the time I read it, except to note at the top, “from a Union soldier“. This soldier definitely had anger issues.

Camp near Budds Fery Jan 17 1862 Dear Brother . . . I am under arrest in the quarters and I expect to be court martialed but the most they can do with me is to reduce me to the ranks and I dont care much about that . . . if I could be promoted by vote of the Co I should have been Lieut long ago . . . but it is a long road that dont turn . . . I am tired of being in hell. if I have come out here to die I dont care how soon but . . . I think my life will be spared to see some of these selfish Officers die so that I can smile over their dead bodies . . . I dont think you would know me I have got as cross as hell.

‘Cross‘ doesn’t begin to cover it!

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Thomas B. Booth, Co. I, 3rd Virginia Volunteer Cavalry Regiment, was a master at the art of understatement. Here’s a note he wrote to his girlfriend two weeks before First Bull Run:

I was riding a horse I borrowed from our captain as Beauregard has not entirely gotten over his lameness. The horse was blind in one eye and while I was lying at the root of a tree fast asleep with the rains wrapped around my arm to keep him from getting away from me. He turned the blind side to me and the first thing I knew he put his foot right upon the top of mine. It was by no means a pleasant feeling.

Here’s the end of his letter: Draw your own conclusions.

I never carry your letters with me. I always burn them either the same day or the day after I get them. You need not be at all uneasy about them nor anything you may write. You never heard of my showing your letter nor you never will. I prize them too highly. I am rather selfish with them. I hate very much having to burn them but I think it best.

Booth was wounded in action while fighting a delaying action against McClellan on the Peninsula in 1862, and he was discharged shortly thereafter.

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The last story is from an interview (not a letter home) done by the Federal Writers’ Project, Work Projects Administration in the 1930s. The interviewee was Gus Bowles, a former Confederate soldier with (Gillespie’s 3rd Texas Lancers), 25th Regiment, Texas Cavalry. His dad was some piece of work!

…“When the Civil War broke out, my father went to fight . . . as I was about 13 years old . . . [I] got me in the notion of going and . . . told my mother that I was going to the war. She began trying to keep me from going . . . but I told her that I would go down to where my father was and I would try to got in the same regiment with him . . . My father was sure surprised to see me . . . Well, he knew I was too young so he went and talked to the colonel . . . and the colonel said he would like to get me to go back home but if I wouldn’t go, I could stay there with my father because he couldn’t sign me up on account of my age. 

Then Bowles reveals something sad: 

My father [then] talked to the colonel about letting me stay there in his place while he went home. I could take his place till he got back. The colonel agreed and they gave me a suit of clothes and a gun . . . We lived on starvation rations. They give us these here old hard-tack crackers and bacon; no coffee . . . I had never wrote to my father to come back, so I stayed there till we got word that Lee’s army had surrendered . . . [and] I went home.” [8]

There are millions of stories from the Irrepressible Conflict. These were just some of them.

Mac

Works Cited

[**] Absolom and his wife, Susan Allstun Harrison, at the time of his enlistment, resided in Hardin County, Kentucky. Susan’s grandmother was Nancy Lincoln Brumfield, Thomas Lincoln’s sister and President Abraham Lincoln’s aunt.

[1] “Harrison, Absolom A. Letters (1861-1862)”. (Transcribed by Ronald Harrison). Civil War Home – Letters About the Civil War. Retrieved March 21, 2024.

[2] “Norton, William Letter (1862)”. (Transcribed by David Dunbar). Civil War Archives – Letters Home from the Civil War. Retrieved March 23, 2024.

[3] “Elliott, William ‘Billy’ Letters” (1862-1863). (Transcribed by Pat Elliott). Civil War Home – Letters About the Civil War. Retrieved March 21, 2024.

[4] “Damron, John D. Letter (1862)”. (Unknown transcriptionist). Civil War Home – Letters About the Civil War. Retrieved March 21, 2024.

[5] “Gardiner, William H. Letters (1862-1863)”. Auburn University Digital Library – Civil War Letters. Retrieved March 20, 2024.

[6] Unknown origin.

[7] "Thomas B. Booth Letters (1862)" Manuscripts of the American Civil War, University of Notre Dame Rare Books and Special Collections. Retrieved March 3, 2024.

[8] Bowles, William Augustus (Interviewee), Angermiller, Florence (Interviewer). U.S. Work Projects Administration, Federal Writers’ Project: Folklore Project, Life Histories (1936-39). Library of Congress. Retrieved March 22, 2024.