Soldier’s Letter
Library of Congress
“Boys who will lie upon their backs with hardly energy enough to turn over will jump up and hurry to the captains tent to get it.”
Alabama soldier John Crittenden, on his comrades’ reaction to mail call in camp, in a letter to his wife, June 28, 1862
Soldiers reading letters
Library of Congress
“Where think you I was when your letter was handed me? It was on the battle-field, the morning succeeding the fight…. The dead were piled around me in every direction—the wounded not yet taken from the field, groaning piteously in their agony. It was on such a spot, with all the horrors of war spread out before me, that your letter was given me by the chaplain.”
W.H. Timberlake, 81st Indiana Infantry, in a letter home, October 17, 1862. Timberlake and the 81st had taken part in the Battle of Perryville, Kentucky, nine days earlier.
“[T]ell me which or when all my correspondents died.”
Michigan officer Charles S. Brown, inquiring of his family the reason for their silence, in a letter home, January 15, 1865
“You cannot easily imagine … what solace I find in your letters. They serve for encouragement, for consolation, for thought. They cheer me in sadness, they come to me in loneliness, bringing hope & comfort and a joy in the assurance that … I have yet a friend.”
Rufus Cater, 19th Louisiana Infantry, in a letter to his cousin Fannie, November 8, 1862
“My letters have been very scarce lately. One reason, I suppose, is that I have written very few myself. I do hope they will begin to come again now. Soldiering without letters is hard work. I don’t blame you any for not writing. I know you have little spare time, but write just as often as you can.”
Oliver W. Norton, 83rd Pennsylvania Infantry, in a letter to his sister, August 5, 1863
Sources
Bell Irvin Wiley, The Life of Johnny Reb (1943); Army Letters, 1861–1865 (1903); Soldiers’ Letters, from Camp, Battlefield and Prison (1865); Soldiers North and South (2010); Soldiers Blue and Gray (1988).
