The Home Front during the Civil War by Jennifer Thompson

1. Quill and Musket Lecturer Series The Home Front during the Civil Warby Jennifer Thompson

2. Children Unidentified Union soldier with small child Library of Congress

3. Eight-year-old Annie P. Marmion, daughter of a physician at Harpers Ferry wrote: “The great objects in life were to procure something to eat and to keep yourself out of sight by day, and keep your candle hidden by night; lights of every kind, being regarded as signals to the Rebels, were usually greeted by a volley of guns.” (Werner, 15) • Sixteen-year-old Maria Lewis, wrote to her father August 13, 1861: “As I think for my first beginning I cant find one more worthy than my own dear Papa I will attempt to scribble a few lins to you to let you know that we are all well at least as far as helth is conserned. But our minds are never easy on your account and never will be untill your safe return. Dear Papa it is so loansome here without you.” (Werner, 19)

4. Fifteen-year-old Elizabeth Horton in Mobile, Alabama, wrote to her seventeen-year-old cousin, Emma Barbour in Cambridgeport, Massachusetts: “Times are indeed troublous, when our city is so flooded with soldiers, thirsting for the blood of those whom they consider their enemies. My fervent prayer is that not a drop of blood may be shed on either side.” (Werner, 7) • Mrs. W.W. Lord in Vicksburg in May 1863 wrote: “The children bear themselves like little heroes. At night when the balls begin to fly like pigeons…and I call them to run to the cave, they spring up…like soldiers, slip on their shoes without a word and run up the hill to the cave.” (Werner, 82) • Fifteen-year-old Albertus McCreary wrote about what happened after Gettysburg: “A schoolmate of mine…had been hunting bullets on Cemetery Hill. He found a shell, and, the contents not coming out fast enough for him, he struck it upon a rock on which he was sitting, and made a spark which exploded the shell. We carried him home, and the surgeons did what they could for him, but he never regained consciousness and died in about an hour.” (Werner, 75)

5. Betty Herndon Maury wrote about her five-year-old daughter Nanny Belle in her diary on January 27, 1863: “She is the most nervous child I ever saw…A band of music is perfect terror to her. She shrieks from going out, and is afraid to go to sleep for fear of dreaming bad dreams….I see more and more plainly every day by how slender a thread her life hangs.” (Werner, 52) • Ten-year-old Carrie Berry wrote in her diary November 12 and November 15, 1864 from Atlanta: “We were fritened almost to death last night. Some mean soldiers set several houses on fire in different parts of the town. I could not go to sleep for fear that they would set our house on fire. We all dred the next few days to come for they said that they would set the last house on fire if they had to leave this place….Things have been burning all around us. We dread to night because we do not know what moment they will set our house on fire.” (Werner, 113)

6. Women Unidentified woman Library of Congress

7. Elisha Hunt Rhodes had promised his mother he would not enlist without her consent since he was her sole means of support. The next Sunday, both felt sorrow all day. She came to his room that night and said, “My son, other mothers must make sacrifices and why should not I? If you feel that it is your duty to enlist, I will give my consent.” He enlisted the next day. (Rhodes, 4) • John H. Worsham wrote: “God bless the Southern women of those days! Would that I were able to build a monument to them. I would have it as high as the steeple of St. Paul’s Church, and in its base a room, the walls of which I would adorn with paintings, telling the story of their lives during those trying times. In the center of this room, I would have a statue of a Southern mother, dressed in plain Confederate clothes, holding in one hand a pocket Bible, which she is handing to her boy who is not old enough to wear a coat, her other hand pointing to the open door, and, with tears streaming down her cheeks, telling him his country’s needs are more than hers – to go and join the army! Among the paintings, I would have the wife and daughters of Gen. Robert E. Lee, knitting socks for the private soldiers of his army! and Mrs. Gen. John B. Gordon, administering to a sick or wounded soldier on the roadside in the field. She accompanied the General in the field during the war. I would fill the room with such scenes as these.” (Worsham, 297-298)

8. W.H.L. Wallace wrote: “I feel that in this war business I am engaged in the holy cause of defending & preserving a home made dear by your love.” (Hess, 124) • Claiborne J. Walton, 21st Kentucky Infantry, wrote to his wife: “We were once so happy as we well could be upon Earth. We were not wealthy but what little we had was neat and tidy and done up in good style….How I long to be permitted to see her as in the days past seated at the head of the table pouring out my coffee and doing the honors of the table generally.” (Hess, 125) • Mary Chestnut wrote in her diary in July 1861: “Today for the first time came a military funeral. As that march came wailing up, they say, Mrs. Barrow fainted. The empty saddle – and the led war horse – we saw and heard it all. And now it seems we are never out of the sound of the Dead March in Saul. It comes and it comes until I feel inclined to close my ears and scream….Dr. Gibbes says the faces of the dead grow as black as charcoal on the battlefield, and they shine in the sun. Now this horrible vision of the dead on the battlefield haunts me.” (Woodward, 107)

9. Robert E. Lee’s wife and cousins knitted socks, which he forwarded to Walker’s brigade for a month. He wrote to her in April: “I have sent to that brigade 263 prs. Still there are about 140 men in that brigade whose homes are within the enemy lines & who are without socks. I shall continue to furnish them untill all are supplied. Tell the young women to work hard for the brave Stonewallers.” (Robertson, 216) • “The wife of the most revered soldier within the South, Mrs. Robert E. Lee, confided in a letter to her child: ‘The prospects before us are sad indeed as I think both parties are wrong in this fratricidal war.’ Whatever feelings she had in private, Mrs. Lee conveyed total support of her husband, as a friend commented: ‘I never saw her more cheerful, and she seems to have no doubt of our success.’” (Clinton, 28-29) • “The Raleigh Register reported an incident in September 1863: A young lady was engaged to be married to a soldier in the army. The soldier suddenly returned home. ‘Why have you left the army?’ she inquired of him. ‘I have found a substitute,’ he replied. ‘Well, sir, I can follow your example, and find a substitute, too. Good morning.’ And she left him in the middle of the room, a disgraced soldier.” (Clinton, 26)

10. “Alabama bride Mary Williamson cried over her husband’s departure to the army: ‘This great sorrow makes me forget I ever had such a feeling as patriotism.’” (Clinton, 28) • “One woman confessed to her diary: ‘The real sorrows of war, like those of drunkenness, always fall most heavily upon women. They may not bear arms. They may not even share the triumphs which compensate their brethren for toil and suffering and danger. They must sit still and endure.’” (Clinton, 29) • Joshua Chamberlain, sent a message to his wife when severely injured at Petersburg: “My darling wife I am lying mortally wounded the doctors think, but my mind & heart are at peace Jesus Christ is my all-sufficient savior. I go to him. God bless & keep & comfort you, precious one, you have been a precious wife to me. To know & love you makes death & life beautiful…Oh how happy to feel yourself forgiven.” (Baehr & Wales, 4)

11. A love letter from Sullivan Ballou to his wife Sarah, written one week before he died at First Manassas: “Our movement may be one of a few days’ duration and full of pleasure – and it may be one of severe conflict and death to me. ‘Not my will, but thine O God, be done.’ If it is necessary that I should fall on the battlefield for my Country, I am ready. I have no misgivings about, or lack of confidence in, the cause in which I am engaged, and my courage does not halt or falter…. Sarah, my love for you is deathless, it seems to bind me to you with mighty cables that nothing but Omnipotence could break; and yet my love of Country comes over me like a strong wind and bears me irresistibly on with all these chains to the battlefield…. I have, I know, but few and small claims upon Divine Providence, but something whispers to me – perhaps it is the wafted prayer of my little Edgar – that I shall return to my loved ones unharmed. If I do not, my dear Sarah, never forget how much I love you, and when my last breath escapes me on the battlefield, it will whisper your name…. I must watch you from the spirit land and hover near you, while you buffet the storms with your precious little freight and wait with sad patience till we meet to part no more…. If the dead can come back to this earth and flit unseen around those they love, I shall always be near you; in the gladdest day and in the darkest night – amidst your happiest scenes and gloomiest hours – always, always; and if there be a soft breeze upon your cheek, it shall be my breath; or the cool air fans your throbbing temple, it shall be my spirit passing by. Sarah, do not mourn me dead; think I am gone and wait for thee, for we shall meet again.” (Baehr & Wales, 34-35)

12. Jestin Hampton wrote to her husband Thomas B. Hampton: “I suffer all the time about you. Not half So much as I should if I knew you were not prepared. That is the greatest comfort of all believing if you fall by the hand of the enemy or disease you will rest in heaven…if it was not for the great hope I have I never could bear up under the present distress.” He was mortally wounded the last month of the war at Bentonville, North Carolina. (Faust, 318)

13. Letters & Supplies from Home Library of Congress

14. Mary Chestnut wrote in her diary on September 19, 1861: “Small war in the Ladies Aid Society….and already succession in the air – a row all the time in full blast. At first there were nearly a hundred members – eighty or ninety always present at a meeting – now ten or twenty are all that they can show. The worst is, they have forgotten the hospitals, where they really could do so much good, and gone off to provision and clothe the army. A drop in the bucket – or ocean.” (Woodward, 195) • Elisha Hunt Rhodes wrote March 6, 1865 from Petersburg, VA: “We have received no mail for several days and do not like it. A soldier can do without hard bread but not without his letters from home.” (Rhodes, 210)

15. Warren Wilkinson wrote: “Now that they were holed up in the trenches of Petersburg, the delivery of packages from home was more efficient, and quite regularly relatives and friends sent food for their loved ones on the line, who often shared it with their messmates. Those packages usually contained sausages, preserves, hams, cheeses, and cakes, and the men were joyous when they received these welcome goodies. Most of the parcels were shipped through the Adams Express Company, a private forwarding firm which had a virtual monopoly on goods sent to the soldiers at the front. But the company’s distribution system was not very efficient, and many of the boxes from home took a long time to reach their destinations. They often arrived with their contents damaged, pilfered, or spoiled, and not a few were stolen outright by unscrupulous people in the delivery process who gave little thought to the needs of the suffering men in the earthworks. Besides packages sent from concerned family and friends, the soldiers often received needed supplies from the United States Sanitary Commission, which provided – apart from food such as lemons, oranges, other fruits, and vegetables – medicine, clothing, bedding, and tobacco, without charge. Those gifts were delivered sporadically, but when they did arrive, they were accepted gratefully.” (Wilkinson, 207)

16. Union officer John William DeForest recalled: “Yesterday’s mail brought me a letter from the wife of one of my private soldiers. She had not heard from her husband for a month, and she wanted to know if he was in trouble or was dead. She had received nothing from him since he enlisted but one remittance of nine dollars….she and her children are likely to be homeless as well as penniless. I fear that she will get little aid from her husband. He is a mild, weak young fellow, easily led away by comrades, low-spirited under the slightest illness, given to cosseting himself with sutler’s trash, and given also to seeking courage in whiskey….I shall give the letter to him with a few words of earnest, epauletted counsel. It may stop him from drinking himself into the gutter twice after every payday, and from sickening himself with bushels of abominable gingerbread and shameless pie.” (Gallman, 236)

17. Flags Library of Congress

18. Sam R. Watkins wrote: “Flags made by the ladies were presented to companies, and to hear the young orators tell of how they would protect that flag, and that they would come back with the flag or come not at all, and if they fell they would fall with their backs to the field and their feet to the foe, would fairly make our hair stand on end with intense patriotism, and we wanted to march right off and whip twenty Yankees. But we soon found out that the glory of war was at home among the ladies and not upon the field of blood and carnage of death, where our comrades were mutilated and torn by shot and shell.” (Watkins, 21)

19. Miss IdeleaCollens said to the DeSoto Rifles of Louisiana, late April 1861: “Receive then, from your mothers and sisters, from those whose affections greet you, these colors woven by our feeble but reliant hands; and when this bright flag shall float before you on the battlefield, let it not only inspire you with the brave and patriotic ambition of a soldier aspiring to his own and his country’s honor and glory, but also may it be a sign that cherished ones appeal to you to save them from a fanatical and heartless foe.” (Wiley, Johnny Reb, 21) • Color-sergeant’s response: “Ladies, with high-beating hearts and pulses throbbing with emotion, we receive from your hands this beautiful flag, the proud emblem of our young republic….To those who may return from the field of battle bearing this flag in triumph, though perhaps tattered and torn, this incident will always prove a cheering recollection and to him whose fate it may be to die a soldier’s death, this moment brought before his fading view will recall your kind and sympathetic words, he will…bless you as his spirit takes its aerial flight….May the God of battles look down upon us as we register a soldier’s vow that no stain shall ever be found upon thy sacred folds, save the blood of those who attack thee or those who fall in thy defence. Comrades you have heard the pledge, may it ever guide and guard you on the tented field…or in the smoke, glare, and din of battle, amidst carnage and death, there let its bright folds inspire you with new strength, nerve your arms and steel your hearts to deeds of strength and valor.” (Wiley, Johnny Reb, 21-22)

20. Mrs. Josephine Wilcox said to the Fourth Michigan: “When you follow this standard in your line of march or on the field of battle, and you see it waving in lines of beauty and gleams of brightness, remember the trust we have placed in your hands. We will follow you in our hearts with our hopes and our prayers. You are the sons of brave men, who under this banner achieved the glorious victory of our national independence….We are the daughters of the brave women of ’76….Our trial has come, our spirits waken and we feel the blood of heroes stirring in our veins. The eyes of the world are placed upon our republican institutions…. Sustain this banner for the love you bear to woman, for under no standard in the wide world is woman so blessed as are Columbia’s daughters….You are to go forth to the conflict to strike for…our noble Constitution, for freedom of speech, for freedom of thought, for God and the right….The eagle of American liberty from her mountain eyrie has at intervals during the past few years given us faint warnings of danger. Now she sweeps down on spreading pinions with unmistakable notes of alarm; her cries have reached the ears of freemen, and brave men rush to arms. She has perched on this banner which we now give to your keeping. Let your trust be in the God of battle to defend it.” Col. Woodbury said trust reposed in him, the men would not be abused, flag would “never be given up to traitors” or disgraced, it would be defended with their lives, its luster would be increased by their deeds of valor. (Wiley, Billy Yank, 29)

21. The farewell address of Lt. Col. Charles T. Trowbridge to 33rd USCT: “The flags…which you have borne so nobly through the war, [are] now rolled up forever, and deposited in our nation’s capital. And while there it shall rest, with the battles in which you have participated inscribed upon its folds, it will be a source of pride to us to all remember that it has never been disgraced by a cowardly faltering in the hour of danger or polluted by a traitor’s touch.” (Gladstone, 11)

22. At a flag raising ceremony of 3rd USCT at Camp William Penn, “The keynote speaker, Mr. George H. Earle, spoke of God and the country. He thrilled the audience when he stated: ‘Our country now calls upon the colored man to defend the flag you have just raised. That flag which is at this time especially the flag of freedom. You are organizing that you may say to foreign states, who would interfere in our affairs, ‘Stand Back!’ and to the Rebel hordes, ‘Disperse!’ Your enemies around you and your enemies in the South have opposed arming you – first, because a musket in your hands was the embodiment of power that might prove hurtful to them and second, because the arming of you was calculated to advance your social status. Never was a colored man more respected than now. Your enemies have said you would not fight. You have already shown how base was that charge. Could you not fight for freedom? Could you not feel for your own children? Do you not realize that when you struggle for the Union, there would be a feeling of gratitude for you hereafter? If you have not fought heretofore, it was not from want of courage, nor from want of loyalty, nor honesty of purpose.” (Gladstone, 156)

23. Nurses Clara Barton, Library of Congress

24. An article from the Daily Gate City in Keokuk, Iowa in November 1861 stated: “The Aid Associations are in very fair working order, and, in the hands of the benevolent women who had initiated them and rendered them effective, gave promise and assurance of being equal to the work they had taken in hand….All at once…an idea seems to have struck our State authorities….A Sanitary Commission has been constituted….This Commission have issued a circular to the women of Iowa, in which they ignore the existence of any Soldiers’ Aid Society, and scold because nothing has been done in the State by the ladies to relieve the sick and wounded soldiers. And we presume the gentlemen constituting that Commission have taken so little interest in the subject that they were substantially in entire ignorance of what has been done.” (Gallman, 121)

25. Clara Barton wrote in her Memoirs in August 1862: “I was strong and thought I might go to the rescue of the men who fell….But I struggled long and hard with my sense of propriety – with the appalling fact that I was only a woman whispering in one ear, and thundering in the other the groans of suffering men dying like dogs – unfed and unsheltered, for the life of every institution which had protected and educated me! I said that I struggled with my sense of propriety and I say it with humiliation and shame. I am ashamed that I thought of such a thing….And when night shut in, in the mist and darkness about us, we knew that standing apart from the world of anxious hearts, throbbing over the whole country, we were a little band of almost empty-handed workers literally by ourselves in the wild woods of Virginia, with 3,000 suffering men crowded upon the few acres within our reach.” (Gallman, 122)

26. Nurse Rebecca Usher wrote to her sister in Maine in December 1862: “We do not like to have our men wear their shirts a month, & their stockings three weeks without washing, but we know that in other places there are many that have neither stockings nor shirts to wear, & so we make the best of it.” (Gallman, 257) • Captain Anderson wrote: “Here every church in the city was a hospital and every one was full, while all around outside lay wounded men ready to take the places of those who were dying within or being removed to Washington, Alexandria and Baltimore, via Belle Plain. Every public building was full, while in the smaller houses were wounded men who had personal friends or relatives in the Christian or Sanitary Commission, or friends who had been passed from Washington for that purpose, and were being kindly cared for. The large agricultural warehouses were also full of soldiers, placed in rows, upon muddy and bloody blankets, while nurses were going up and down between the rows with pails of ice water.” (Wilkinson, 96)

27. Another soldier wrote: “For the first few days of Fredericksburg it was almost impossible to obtain bandages. The women, with a few exceptions, were bitter rebels and would do all they could to prevent us from finding or buying a single piece of cloth. The bandage with which my own wound was bound up was part of the white skirt belonging to an elderly lady who brought roses into the Southern Methodist Episcopal Church where I was lying, a Mrs. McCabe. Seeing the need of a bandage, she loosed her skirt, cut it into strips, and handed it to my father, who proceeded to dress my own and other soldiers’ wounds.” (Wilkinson, 96) • The Christian Commission: “Their heartfelt mission was to touch the lives of Union soldiers, to replace the families from which they had been taken. Jane Swisshelm, who volunteered to work in Union hospitals, described an experience: ‘What is your name?’ a wounded soldier at Fredericksburg asked. ‘My name is mother,’ she replied. ‘Mother….I have not seen my mother for two years. Let me feel your hand.’” (Clinton, 12) • The Sanitary Commission: “Frederick Law Olmsted praised the ‘glorious women’ in the Sanitary Commission, commenting, ‘God knows what we should have done without them, they have worked like heroes night and day.’” (Clinton, 14)

28. “…many families were devastated by the painful divides the war provoked. Septima M. Collis reported in her memoir: ‘I never fully realized the fratricidal character of the conflict until I lost my idolized brother Dave of the Southern army one day, and was nursing my Northern husband back to life the next.’” (Clinton, 25) • “Kate Cumming of Mobile described a typical scene in April 1862: ‘The men are lying all over the house on their blankets, just as they were brought from the battlefield. They are in the hall, on the gallery, and crowded into very small rooms. The foul air from this mass of human beings at first made me giddy and sick, but I soon got over it. We have to walk, and when we give the men anything, kneel in blood and water.’ (Clinton, 27) • General Gordon told this story: “A beautiful Southern girl, on her daily mission of love and mercy, asked a badly wounded soldier boy what she could do for him. He replied: ‘I’m greatly obliged to you, but it is too late for you to do anything….I can’t live long.’ ‘Will you not let me pray for you? I hope that I am one of the Lord’s daughters, and I would like to ask him to help you.’ Looking intently into her bewitching face, the boy replied: ‘Yes, pray at once and ask the Lord to let me be His son-in-law.’” (Hendrickson, 87)

29. John H. Worsham wrote: “I heard numerous soldiers say they were glad they were wounded, as the careful attention received from those women more than repaid them for the suffering they endured! Here is a little incident told me after the war, by one of the fashionable young ladies, who lived on one of the fashionable streets of Richmond during the war. She was one of the young ladies who composed one of the hospital committees. In one of the hospitals which she attended, there was a soldier from one of the southern states who was desperately wounded, whom devoted nursing saved. He appreciated it and showed his obligation as well as a man could by thanks. When he was well and was ordered to his command in the field, he asked this young lady if he might call at her home. She told him she would be glad to see him at any time, and gave him the number of her residence. A day or two afterwards he called, and after conversing a short while, he told her he knew that the care given him by the ladies had saved his life, and he had asked to call in order that he might thank her and at the same time he wished to make her a little present. This had given him a great deal of thought, as his means were very limited, but he had bought her what he considered the best thing in the world, and he presented her with a small package of “goobers” (peanuts), saying he wished he were able to give her a bushel! She said to me that she considered that the most valuable present she ever received, and prized it as such, because it came from the man’s heart; and she thinks it took every cent of money he had to purchase it!” (Worsham, 296-297)

30. Sources: • Baehr, Ted and Susan Wales. Faith in God and Generals: An Anthology of Faith, Hope, and Love in the American Civil War. Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 2003. • Clinton, Catherine. Life in Civil War America. Eastern National, 1996. • Faust, Drew Gilpin. This Republic of Suffering: Death and the Civil War. New York: Vintage Books, 2008. • Gallman, J. Matthew, ed. The Civil War Chronicle. New York: Gramercy Books, 2000. • Gladstone, William A. Men of Color. Gettysburg: Thomas Publications, 1993. • Hendrickson, Robert. The Road to Appomattox. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1998. • Hess, Earl J. The Union Soldier in Battle: Enduring the Ordeal of Combat. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1997.

31. Rhodes, Robert Hunt, ed. All for the Union: The Civil War Diary and Letters of Elisha Hunt Rhodes. New York: Vintage Books, 1985. • Robertson, James I., Jr. The Stonewall Brigade. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1977. • Watkins, Sam R. Co. Aytch: A Confederate Memoir of the Civil War. New York: Touchstone Book, 1997. • Werner, Emmy E. Reluctant Witnesses: Children’s Voices from the Civil War. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, Inc., 1998. • Wiley, Bell Irvin. The Life of Billy Yank. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1952. • Wiley, Bell Irvin. The life of Johnny Reb. Garden City, NJ: Doubleday and Company, 1971. • Wilkinson, Warren. Mother, May You Never See the Sights I Have Seen: The Fifty-Seventh Massachusetts Veteran Volunteers in the Army of the Potomac 1864-1865. New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1990.

32. Woodward, C. Vann, ed. Mary Chestnut’s Civil War. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981. • Worsham, John H. One of Jackson’s Foot Cavalry. New York: The Neale Publishing Company, 1912. Reprint, Time-Life Books, 1982.