Letters to Lizzie

Sujets

• Histoire
• USA
• United States of America
• History of the Americas
• Civil war
• American Civil War
• États-Unis
• Guerre de Sécession

Informations

• Publié par: The Kent State University Press
• Date de parution: 06 décembre 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781631015014
• Langue: English

Extrait

Letters to Lizzie
INTERPRETING THE CIVIL WAR
Texts and Contexts
EDITOR Angela M. Zombek University of North Carolina, Wilmington
Aaron Astor Maryville College
Joseph M. Beilein Jr. Pennsylvania State University
Douglas R. Egerton Le Moyne College
J. Matthew Gallman University of Florida
Hilary N Green University of Alabama
Wiliam B. Kurtz University of Virginia
Brian Craig Miller Mission College
Jennifer M. Murray Oklahoma State University
Jonathan W. White Christopher Newport University
Timothy Williams University of Oregon
The Interpreting the Civil War series focuses on America’s long Civil War era, from the rise of antebellum sectional tensions through Reconstruction.
These studies, which include both critical monographs and edited compilations, bring new social, political, economic, or cultural perspectives to our understanding of sectional tensions, the war years, Reconstruction, and memory. Studies reflect a broad, national perspective; the vantage point of local history; or the direct experiences of individuals through annotated primary source collections.
Letters to Lizzie

THE STORY OF SIXTEEN MEN IN THE CIVIL WAR AND THE ONE WOMAN WHO CONNECTED THEM ALL

EDITED BY James M. Scythes
THE KENT STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS Kent, Ohio
© 2022 by The Kent State University Press, Kent, Ohio 44242
All rights reserved
ISBN 978-1-60635-452-0
Manufactured in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced, in any manner whatsoever, without written permission from the Publisher, except in the case of short quotations in critical reviews or articles.
Cataloging information for this title is available at the Library of Congress.
26 25 24 23 22 5 4 3 2 1
For Chere, Isabella, and Brady
CONTENTS
______________________________
List of Figures
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction
CHAPTER ONE 1861: “You Will Fight for Washington”
CHAPTER TWO 1862: “A Soldier’s Life Is a Trying and Discouraging Life”
CHAPTER THREE 1863: “I Have Engaged to Kill for Uncle Sam”
CHAPTER FOUR 1864: “May I Meet You in That Good Old Place Called Bethel”
CHAPTER FIVE 1865: “They Can Look for Me Home”
Epilogue
Notes
Bibliography
Index
FIGURES
______________________________
Fig. 1. Camden and Gloucester Counties, 1872
Fig. 2. Second Bethel Methodist Episcopal Church, 1880
Fig. 3. Thomas Wick
Fig. 4. Charge of Kimball’s Brigade at Fredericksburg
Fig. 5. Washington Township, 1876
Fig. 6. Bethel Methodist Episcopal Church, 2022
Fig. 7. Bethel Methodist Episcopal Church and grave of Lizzie Brick Thompson
Fig. 8. Graves of John Thompson and Lizzie Brick Thompson
PREFACE
______________________________
Letters to Lizzie: The Story of Sixteen Men in the Civil War and the One Woman Who Connected Them All describes how sixteen men (fifteen Union soldiers and a clerk at a military hospital in Newark, New Jersey) sought to sustain their social network during the Civil War by drawing upon information found in the 124 letters exchanged between them and a teenager named Lizzie Brick. Most of these men were from Lizzie’s hometown of Hurffville, New Jersey, or a neighboring town. Of the sixteen correspondents, two were cousins of Lizzie and one, Benjamin F. Young, was her uncle. The rest, except for the two men who befriended her cousin Edward Brick in the Ward US General Hospital in Newark, were people she either grew up with or knew from the Bethel Methodist Episcopal (M. E.) Church in Hurffville.
The correspondence between Lizzie Brick and her sixteen friends and family members is unlike any other large letter collection published to date. Many collections of Civil War letters have been published over the years, but those works typically contain the correspondence between just two individuals during the war. This work differs by presenting the Civil War from multiple perspectives, offering us a chance to view the war through the experiences of sixteen men and one young lady. Since most published Civil War letters were written from a man’s perspective, female voices have not been fully heard. But Lizzie is not silent in this work. She wrote three letters from this collection, and her voice can be heard in many of those written by her soldier-correspondents. The men often respond to questions she asked or statements she made in a recent letter, providing a rare glimpse into the thoughts and opinions of the woman at the center of this web of men.
The volume of mail going in to and coming out of Union army camps averaged 180,000 letters per day. Missives written by soldiers to their family and friends back home covered a wide array of topics, such as battles, health, weather, Southern people, and camp life. 1 But as historian Christopher Hager has explained, countless Civil War soldiers, and many of their correspondents, had little experience with letter writing prior to the war. Letters written by common soldiers are often difficult to read because they contain numerous misspelled words, little or no punctuation, and sometimes are barely legible, but the soldiers’ desire to connect with family members and friends back home compelled them to pick up a pen or pencil, no matter how rudimentary their skills. 2 Taking into consideration the spelling and sentence structure found in many of the letters written to Lizzie, it is clear that most of her correspondents had received little or no formal education and were marginally literate. At least one man, Isaac Clark, was illiterate and “wrote” all of his letters though an amanuensis. Despite their numerous grammatical errors, the letters found in this collection, like the ones consulted by Hager for his book or the thousands of letters transcribed by the creators of the online database Private Voices , demonstrate that the correspondence written by common soldiers during the Civil War, which is sometimes criticized for lacking the details that aid historians in answering the war’s larger questions, can provide us with valuable insights into the conflict and “are frequently more powerful than ones by educated counterparts.” 3
There are two major stories found within the 124 letters of this collection. The first is about the relationship between Lizzie and the sixteen men. On numerous occasions they explained how her letters boosted their spirits and how much she meant to them; some may have possessed romantic feelings for her. An analysis of the correspondence between Lizzie and the men contributes to our understanding of male-female friendships in the mid-nineteenth century. Some of the soldiers’ letters, as well as those penned by Lizzie, focused on religion, since many of the men knew her from Bethel M. E. Church. She encouraged her friends to practice religion while in the military and to put their trust in God. The soldiers would reminisce about their meetings at church and Sunday school class, and many asked her to keep them in her prayers as they faced the dangers of the battlefield. The most unique aspect of this collection, though, is how the soldiers also used their correspondence with Lizzie to stay connected to one another during the war. In many of the letters, they asked her for updates about mutual friends who were in other regiments or passed along messages to her from other community members serving in the Union army. This contributes to our understanding of the connections between the soldiers and their communities as well as the role that women played during the Civil War in sustaining these relationships.
The second overarching story involves the experiences of the soldiers during the Civil War. These sixteen men served in eleven different regiments (some of them served in more than one regiment during the course of the conflict) that were part of the Army of the Potomac, experiencing its successes and failures. In their letters to Lizzie, the soldiers communicated their opinions about the people of the South, described their experiences on the battlefield, and voiced their frustrations with their commanders and the conduct of the war. Since these letters span the entire war, the topics covered within them offer us valuable insight into the lives of common soldiers.
Of the 124 letters in this collection, 123 are housed in the Civil War Letters Collection in the library of the Gloucester County Historical Society in Woodbury, New Jersey. No record exists as to when the society came into possession of the documents or who donated them. Lizzie’s daughter, Annie Williams, or one of Annie’s children was the likely donor; Lizzie lived with Annie at the time of her death, and her daughter surely inherited the letter collection. But there are no records to substantiate this theory. I purchased the other letter, written by David E. Eldridge and dated November 27, 1862, on eBay while writing the manuscript for this book. After this purchase, I began to wonder why it had not been donated to the Gloucester County Historical Society along with the rest of the collection and how many more of these letters to Lizzie had been separated from the bulk of them. These questions may remain unanswered. Unfortunately, I was not able to find a photograph of Lizzie and located only one photograph, that of Thomas W. Wick, of all the soldiers who wrote to her.
I was first introduced to this letter collection when I was an undergraduate in 1994 by the late Edith Hoelle, who was the librarian of the Gloucester County Historical Society. After looking through the documents, I decided to use some of them for my senior seminar paper, which focused on those written by three men—Edward L. Brick, Theodore Brick, and David E. Eldridge—who served in Company G, 12th New Jersey Volunteer Infantry Regiment. I revisited the collection in 2014 while writing my first book, This Will Make a Man of Me , and used a few of the letters written by Isaac Clark, who served in the 3rd New Jersey Volunteer Infantry Regiment. As I worked on these project