ON THIS DAY: Wednesday, Jan. 15, 1862

Mail Call

Twenty-eight-year-old Cpl. Alfred D. Searles, a member of Company H, 21^st Ohio Volunteer Infantry, is in winter quarters in western Kentucky. Alfred frequently writes letters and he expects his family to do the same. Today he sits down to send his parents a common complaint.

I take this opportunity…of writing a letter to you today to find out what we have done that we cannot have another letter from you. It is now over 3 weeks since we have heard [from you], but we shall write no more till we hear from home.

Searles’ distress at receiving no mail is one of many examples, found in Civil War archives, of pleading by soldiers for news from home. Tired, lonely, dispirited bored soldiers yearned for reassurance they were cared for and not forgotten. Folks at home were just as anxious to receive letters assuring them their men were safe and sound. To pressure correspondents to send more mail, soldiers counted the letters they received, compared with the ones they sent.

It would take quite a while before both sides learned that mail delivery in Civil War times was a chancey thing, with weather, bushwhackers, and military operations—not to mention weary horses—combining to delay and sometimes lose mail.

But both parties kept trying, with soldiers unaccustomed to putting pen to paper scrambling to find writing utensils and struggle with the mechanics of putting sentences together while using a knapsack or drum for a desk.

Montgomery Meigs, postmaster general in the Lincoln administration, came to the soldiers’ aid by introducing money orders and “soldier’s mail,” which required payment of postage from recipients rather than the soldiers, who not only had little money, but had trouble getting and keeping stamps.

Searles is not optimistic about coming home any time soon. “If reports be true we have only just begun in the war.”

He goes on to describe camp conditions: “It is dreadful weat and mudy here…It is an awfull time for mud here. We have some awfull cold nights here, but very little snow.”

Searles includes a foreboding comment: “Perhaps I shall stay the 3 years out and perhaps I shall never get back. That is more than a man can tell…”

Time will tell if Corporal Searles’ comment is a prescient one.

ELSEWHERE IN THE WAR: A Union gunboat on a reconnaissance mission sails up the Tennessee River almost as far as the Confederate fort called Fort Henry. It is worrisome omen for the Confederates. In Washington, the U.S. Senate confirms Lincoln's nomination of Edwin M. Stanton as secretary of war. It took the Senate less than two days from nomination to vote. Those were the days!

IT’S COMING SOONER THAN YOU THINK: April 12, 2011—less than 3½ years from now!—will be the 150^th anniversary of the outbreak of the Civil War. In 1861, April 12 was the day Confederates opened fire on Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor.

Your suggestions, comments, and questions about this blog are always welcome. Address the author: Ohioan@bloodtearsandglory.com

For more information about the author and his newest book, please go to http://www.orangefrazer.com/btg

ON THIS DAY: Sunday, Dec. 29, 1861

Love Letter

At Camp Chase outside Columbus today, a man who is having one love affair and beginning another writes his wife, Caroline, at their home in Millersburg, Ohio. The writer is Marcus M. Spiegel, a man passionately in love with Caroline, who he had met and married eight years earlier. But Spiegel (pictured here), who is captain of Company C in the newly formed 67^th Ohio Volunteer Infantry, is also falling in love with army life.

“My dear & much beloved wife and children!” Spiegel practically shouts at the beginning of his letter (For clarity, most of the spelling and syntax in these excerpts have been changed.). “Here we have barracks large and commodious….My quarters are prepared with [a] bunk also & [are] as warm as can be….If I could only see you and the children once a day, I would feel as happy as I could wish.

“While I write you I can hear 2 bands playing and the drummers beating. This is a most magnificent day and the guard mounting& dress parade today [were] splendid.”

Spiegel ends by urging his wife not to worry, a soldier’s typical words that are typically ignored. “Farewell, my loves, & remember your ever-loving husband & father,” he concludes.

Spiegel is a Jew in an age of open anti-Semitism, although his winning personality seems to have spared him much of the usual hostility. Still, the feeling is there, if not always spoken. Moreover, Spiegel’s work as a wholesale merchant in Holmes County had not spared him “pecuniary troubles…for the last 3 years.” So the army offers Spiegel a new opportunity to achieve success and esteem.

Eventually, Spiegel’s new love affair will affect his first one. Actions—especially those in war—have consequences.

Col. Marcus Spiegel’s picture appears here through the generosity of his great-great granddaughter, Jean Powers Soman. Colonel and Caroline Spiegel’s story is told in full in A Jewish Colonel in the Civil War, the colonel’s letters edited by Mrs. Soman and Frank L. Byrne.

OTHER OHIOANS TODAY: From Camp Union, Fayetteville, western Virginia, Lt. Col. Rutherford B. Hayes: of the 23^rd Ohio bombards Lucy with rhetorical questions about their newborn son, not yet named, “Does the ‘face of the boy’ indicate the heart of the boy’? Do you love him as much as the others? Do you feel sorry the fourth [son] was not a daughter?” We do not know how Lucy answered, but we can guess.

Also from Camp Union, Col. Eliakim Scammon’s expedition of 5 companies—about half a regiment—marches 25 miles south from Fayetteville to Raleigh (now Beckley), hoping to surprise a camp of sick Confederates further down the road. So far, the Federals have met no opposition nor surprised any Confederates. So it goes.

From Camp Jefferson in Kentucky, Robert Caldwell of the 21^st Ohio, Company I, cheerily writes his mother in Elmore, Ohio, that “We live top top.” The dutiful son assures his mother that his tent and the area around it “are thoroughly policed every morning” for cleanliness and that his company has a wonderful cook, a Mr. Barnes. Caldwell claims the company cook is skillful enough to work in a restaurant, making him a rarity among army cooks.

Another member of the 21^st Ohio is less chipper. Alfred D. Searles, one of two brothers from Fulton County, Ohio, who are enrolled in Company H, complains to his family, “Here in camp…they is so many men and they hurried here by the thousands and the tens of thousands all expecting to be led on to battle and now within a few miles of the enemy we are stopped and commanded to lay here for near 3 months and not a man of us even to our colonels can solve the mystery or even guess what the meaning may be.” Innocent young men like Searles cannot guess what is coming. Before the war is over, the 21^st will have seen all the combat it could ever want, and more.

Creating the mystery in Searles’ mind is Brig. Gen. Don Carlos Buell, commander of the Army of the Ohio. Washington is urging Buell to action, but the slow, stubborn general is secretly waiting for spring so he can attack Nashville and East Tennessee on his own schedule and in his own way. Buell does not realize he has less than a year to prove himself.

ELSEWHERE IN THE CIVIL WAR: Brig. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant has returned from inspecting the troops under his command in the District of Cairo. Grant ordered some tweaking of troop locations, found many loyalist refugees living in a cave, and gathered intelligence about the number and disposition of Confederates in western Kentucky. Grant informs Union command in St. Louis that he also has a spy in Columbus, Kentucky, busily mapping Confederate earthworks and eavesdropping on enemy conversations.

DON'T FORGET: April 12, 2011 marks the 150th anniversary of the outbreak of the Civil War. That's less than 3 1/2 years from now!

Your suggestions, comments, and questions about this blog are always welcome. Address the author: Ohioan@bloodtearsandglory.com

For more information about the author and his newest book, please go to http://www.orangefrazer.com/btg