The Whartons' War

Description

Between March 1863 and July 1865, Confederate newlyweds Brigadier General Gabriel C. Wharton and Anne Radford Wharton wrote 524 letters, and all survived, unknown until now. Separated by twenty years in age and differing opinions on myriad subjects, these educated and articulate Confederates wrote frankly and perceptively on their &8239;Civil War &8239;world. Sharing opinions on generals and politicians, the course of the war, the fate of the Confederacy, life at home, and their wavering loyalties, the &8239;Whartons &8239;explored the shifting gender roles brought on by war, changing relations between slave owners and enslaved people, the challenges of life behind Confederate lines, the pain of familial loss, the definitions of duty and honor, and more.&8239;&8239;

Featuring one of the fullest &8239;known &8239;sets of correspondence by a high-level officer and his wife, this volume reveals the &8239;Whartons' wartime experience from their courtship in the spring of 1863 to June 1865, when Gabriel Wharton swore loyalty to the United States and accepted parole before returning home. William C. Davis and Sue Heth Bell's thoughtful editing guides readers into this world of experience and its ongoing historical relevance.

Sujets

• Civil War Period
• Histoire
• Battle of Waynesboro
• Battle of Fisher's Hill
• Battle of Cedar Creek
• Battle of Winchester
• Battle of New Market
• Army of Northern Virginia
• Battle of Cold Harbor
• United States
• History

Informations

• Publié par: The University of North Carolina Press
• Date de parution: 03 mai 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781469667713
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 10 Mo

Extrait

The Whartons’ War
CIVIL WAR AMERICA
Peter S. Carmichael, Caroline E. Janney, and Aaron Sheehan-Dean, editors
This landmark series interprets broadly the history and culture of the Civil War era through the long nineteenth century and beyond. Drawing on diverse approaches and methods, the series publishes historical works that explore all aspects of the war, biographies of leading commanders, and tactical and campaign studies, along with select editions of primary sources. Together, these books shed new light on an era that remains central to our understanding of American and world history.
The Whartons’ War
The Civil War Correspondence of
GENERAL GABRIEL C. WHARTON
& ANNE RADFORD WHARTON ,
1863–1865
EDITED BY WILLIAM C. DAVIS & SUE HETH BELL
FOREWORD BY PETER S. CARMICHAEL
THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA PRESS
Chapel Hill
© 2022 The University of North Carolina Press
All rights reserved
Set in Arnhem and Sentinel
by Westchester Publishing Services
Manufactured in the United States of America
The University of North Carolina Press has been a member of the Green Press Initiative since 2003.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Wharton, Gabriel Colvin, 1824–1906, author. | Wharton, Anne Radford. Correspondence. Selections. | Wharton, Anne Radford, author. | Davis, William C., 1946– editor. | Bell, Sue Heth, editor. | Carmichael, Peter S., writer of foreword.
Title: The Whartons' war : the Civil War correspondence of General Gabriel C. Wharton and Anne Radford Wharton, 1863–1865 / edited by William C. Davis and Sue Heth Bell ; foreword by Peter S. Carmichael.
Other titles: Civil War correspondence of General Gabriel C. Wharton and Anne Radford Wharton, 1863–1865 | Civil War America (Series)
Description: Chapel Hill : University of North Carolina Press, 2022. | Series: Civil War America | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021054800 | ISBN 9781469667706 (cloth ; alk. paper) | ISBN 9781469668291 (pbk. ; alk. paper) | ISBN 9781469667713 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH : Wharton, Gabriel Colvin, 1824–1906—Correspondence. | Wharton, Anne Radford—Correspondence. | Confederate States of America. Army—Officers—Correspondence. | United States—History—Civil War, 1861–1865—Personal narratives, Confederate. | Confederate States of America—Social conditions.
Classification: LCC E 467.1. W 48 A 4 2022 | DDC 973.7/30130922—dc23/eng/20211129
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021054800
Cover illustrations: Left , Gabriel C. Wharton (courtesy of Sue Heth Bell); right , Anne Radford Wharton (courtesy of Glencoe Mansion, Museum and Gallery, Radford Heritage Foundation); background , Wharton letter (courtesy of Sue Heth Bell).
CONTENTS List of Illustrations Foreword Preface Introduction. Gabe and Nannie: 1824–March 1863 Chapter 1. Engagement: March 8–May 12, 1863 Chapter 2. Newlyweds: June 9–July 16, 1863 Chapter 3. Off to Join General Lee: July 20–28, 1863 Chapter 4. Nannie Sees “Action”: August 1–6, 1863 Chapter 5. Waiting for Lee: August 7–13, 1863 Chapter 6. A General at Last: August 17–September 26, 1863 Chapter 7. Stuck in East Tennessee: September 27–November 8, 1863 Chapter 8. Blountville Days: November 9–25, 1863 Chapter 9. Endless Tennessee: November 25–30, 1863 Chapter 10. Marching All Year and Doing Nothing: December 1–14, 1863 Chapter 11. Fed Up with General Jones: December 15, 1863–January 7, 1864 Chapter 12. Bull’s Gap: January 9–22, 1864 Chapter 13. Still at Bull’s Gap: January 23–31, 1864 Chapter 14. Farewell, General Jones: February 1–13, 1864 Chapter 15. The Hope of Spring: February 14–March 25, 1864 Chapter 16. Back to Old Virginia: March 27–April 10, 1864 Chapter 17. The Eve of Battle: April 13–May 4, 1864 Chapter 18. New Market: May 5–17, 1864 Chapter 19. Battles and a Baby: May 19–June 23, 1864 Chapter 20. Yankees in Commotion: June 29–August 10, 1864 Chapter 21. Glimmers of Hope: August 12–September 2, 1864 Chapter 22. Winchester to Fisher’s Hill: September 6–29, 1864 Chapter 23. Cedar Creek: September 30–October 22, 1864 Chapter 24. Disillusionment with Early: October 23–November 4, 1864 Chapter 25. Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?: November 4–24, 1864 Chapter 26. Winter of Discontent: November 26–December 23, 1864 Chapter 27. An End at Last: December 26, 1864–June 21, 1865 Epilogue. Aftermath: “A Full, Rich Life” Notes Bibliography Index
ILLUSTRATIONS
Colonel Gabriel C. Wharton     9
“Gabe” in uniform as a colonel     12
Anne Rebecca “Nannie” Radford     13
Nannie’s father, John Blair Radford     14
“Arnheim,” the Radford family home     15
Elizabeth Campbell Taylor Radford     16
Nannie’s brother Lieutenant William Moseley Radford     18
William Washington’s portrait of Colonel Wharton     30
Nannie’s brother Lieutenant Colonel John Taylor Radford     322
William Radford “Willie” Wharton     359
Nannie and William Radford “Willie” Wharton     362
“Glencoe,” the house that Gabe built     363
Nannie in later years     368
Gabe in later years     374
Dedication of General Wharton’s memorial     380
FOREWORD
Letters from a couple in love can be tedious to read: long on sentiment and short on substance, full of obsessive longing but light on serious reflection. The words coming from happy loving couples—to take a phrase from a song by Joe Jackson—seemingly offer little to the historian. And yet today’s savvy readers can find embedded in romantic exchanges a range of deeper meanings, particularly if they consider what is unsaid alongside what is written, looking for the blind spots that kept the letter writers from seeing their own flaws as well as the flaws of the world they inhabited. Slaveholding couples such as Gabriel and Anne Wharton, whose letters are presented here, exemplify the particular challenges in deciphering written sources from privileged classes. Slaveholders, like all ruling classes, could be loving, sharply observant, insightful, but also vain, self-righteous, violent, and hopelessly insecure about losing their privileged status. Such traits seem especially odious among elites whose status depended on chattel slavery.
One might question the worthiness of studying white people who owned Black bodies, when they left a paper trail that today seems so inattentive to their culpability in the injustices of slavery. It is a reasonable reservation, but it should not keep us from exploring how historical actors lived, thought, and acted. As readers will discover in The Whartons’ War , Gabriel and Anne routinely fell short of their Christian aspirations as a couple in a number of realms. To render final judgment on the Whartons for their failings—whether as husband and wife, as Confederates, or as slaveholders—is not particularly revealing or useful. Instead, one would do well to focus on the ways nineteenth-century Virginians like the Whartons navigated the jarring contradictions between their high ideals and the ugly realities of daily life. This approach requires that we acknowledge the great distance and difference that separates us from people in the past. If we refuse to do so, we risk losing touch with valuable historical sources such as those presented here.
The correspondence between Gabriel and Anne Wharton offers a remarkable portal into a unique sensibility of the past. What is commonly understood as the foreignness of history is discoverable when empathy is shown for all historical actors. Empathy should not be confused with acceptance of the unacceptable or conflated with sympathy for the detestable. Empathy is about understanding how a life in the past, which seems morally incomprehensible and unjustifiable today, made sense to those who were living it then. The Wharton correspondence tells more than a love story. Their letters invite us into their homes, into their military camps, and, above all else, into their most intimate conversations. Their private expressions are not reducible to emotional flashes sparked by the heat of war. Feelings were cultivated, carefully considered within a cultural context, and put on paper with purposeful intent. When emotional etiquette relaxed during the war, women and men felt free to divulge their most intimate thoughts, and in some cases, they transgressed gendered boundaries that were inviolable before the war.
Anne wrote without fear to her husband, carefully using emotions associated with honor to influence his professional decisions. Knowing that Gabriel was always trying to win her love and respect, Anne felt free to use her leverage, reminding him that her future husband must be ambitious. Lacking the drive for acclaim, she believed, signified a lack of honor in a man. She dreamed of Gabriel Wharton winning battlefield laurels that would bring prestige to the entire household. When public recognition was slow in coming, Anne pressed Gabriel to pull the right political wires in Richmond for a promotion. At the end of one letter, penned on March 14, 1863, she delivered her marching orders: “I secretly admire that delicacy & nobility of character wh prompts you to act so but alas it so materially interferes with the ruling passion of my life—Ambition—that I am almost tempted to condemn it & quarrel with you in good fashion.… You cannot intrigue for yourself—just remember you are doing it for me—& I know you will do anything in the world for me.”
Gabriel did not chafe at Anne’s pointed words. In fact, her demands made her more desirable in his eyes. Anne’s purity and inherent goodness—traits that were seen as uniquely inherent to women—he believed he could feel when reading her letters. Gabriel put Anne on an altar, as a woman to be adored and admired; throughout the war, he looked to her as his inspiration to achieve greatness. “I worship you, that all my ambition is centered in you, all that I have to be proud of in the wide world is my beautiful sweet precious little wife,” he wrote. “You are my all, my life, my whole existence. Whe