This Infernal War

Description

Among collections of letters written between American soldiers and their spouses, the Civil War correspondence of William and Jane Standard stands out for conveying the complexity of the motives and experiences of Union soldiers and their families. The Standards of Lewiston in Fulton County, Illinois, were antiwar Copperheads. Their attitudes toward Abraham Lincoln, "Black Republicans," and especially African Americans are, frankly, troubling to modern readers. Scholars who argue that the bulk of Union soldiers left their families and went to war to champion republican government or to wipe out slavery will have to account for this couple's rejection of the war's ideals.Yet the war changed them, in spite of themselves. Jane's often bitter letters illuminate the alienation of women left alone and the impact on a small community of its men going to war. But she grew more independent in her husband's absence. Enlisting in the 103rd Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment in October 1862, William participated in General Sherman's Siege of Vicksburg, the Battles of Missionary Ridge and Atlanta, and the March to the Sea. At the war's end he proudly marched in the Grand Review of the Armies in the national capital. Meanwhile, he expressed enthusiasm for stealing and foraging (a.k.a., "cramping") and unhappiness with his service, complaints that fed Jane's intermittent requests that he desert or be captured and paroled. William's odyssey illustrates the Union military's assimilation of resentful Northern men to support a long, grueling, and, after 1862, revolutionary war on the South.The Standards' antiwar opinions hearken to modern expressions of pacifism and condemnation of government. Jane's and William's opposition to the war helped sustain their commitment to and dependence on each other to survive it. Their letters reveal two strong-willed people in love, remaining hopeful, passionate, loyal, and even playful as they awaited their own reunion.

Sujets

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

Informations

• Publié par: The Kent State University Press
• Date de parution: 15 janvier 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781631012723
• Langue: English

Extrait

A DVANCE P RAISE FOR “T HIS I NFERNAL W AR ”
“Timothy Mason Roberts has unruffled a vitally important collection of correspondence that complicates our traditional understanding of Union soldiers and civilians. The Standards talk in stunning detail about race, politics, and the daily grind of the Civil War on the lives of one particular family who loathed the idea of a war for the liberation of enslaved African Americans. This collection is vitally important to our understanding of the most pivotal chapter in American history.”
— B RIAN C RAIG M ILLER , editor of Civil War History and author of “A Punishment on the Nation”: An Iowa Soldier Endures the Civil War (Kent State University Press)
“With its combination of military, civilian, home front, and unusual political elements, this volume has wide appeal for both a scholarly and popular audience. The Standards’ frank discussions of race, sex, and the traumatic effects of war on both soldiers and their families make this a particularly valuable collection. There just aren’t many complete collections from a Copperhead couple, and Roberts’s editing and analysis successfully place the letters into proper historical and historiographic context. It is an important work.”
— B RADLEY K EEFER , author of Conflicting Memories on the “River of Death”: The Chickamauga Battlefield and the Spanish-American War, 1863–1933 (Kent State University Press)
“William Standard was not the soldier we expect to see. He did not go to war to save the Union or free the slaves. More likely he went to stave off creditors and maintain his standing in the community. Both he and his wife, Jane, had family ties to the South, and neither had warm feelings toward Republicans. In fact, both could be counted as Copperheads–antiwar Democrats. We don’t find many letters of Copperhead soldiers in the archives, and that is what makes ‘This Infernal War’ such a gold mine for students of the Civil War.”
—J ENNIFER L. W EBER , associate professor, University of Kansas
“This Infernal War”
CIVIL WAR IN THE NORTH

Broken Glass: Caleb Cushing and the Shattering of the Union · John M. Belohlavek
Banners South: A Northern Community at War · Edmund J. Raus
“Circumstances are destiny”: An Antebellum Woman’s Struggle to Define Sphere · Tina Stewart Brakebill
More Than a Contest between Armies: Essays on the Civil War · Edited by James Marten and A. Kristen Foster
August Willich’s Gallant Dutchmen: Civil War Letters from the 32nd Indiana Infantry · Translated and Edited by Joseph R. Reinhart
Meade’s Army: The Private Notebooks of Lt. Col. Theodore Lyman · Edited by David W. Lowe
Dispatches from Bermuda: The Civil War Letters of Charles Maxwell Allen, U.S. Consul at Bermuda, 1861–1888 · Edited by Glen N. Wiche
The Antebellum Crisis and America’s First Bohemians · Mark A. Lause
Orlando M. Poe: Civil War General and Great Lakes Engineer · Paul Taylor
Northerners at War: Reflections on the Civil War Home Front · J. Matthew Gallman
A German Hurrah! Civil War Letters of Friedrich Bertsch and Wilhelm Stängel, 9th Ohio Infantry · Translated and Edited by Joseph R. Reinhart
“They Have Left Us Here to Die”: The Civil War Prison Diary of Sgt. Lyle G. Adair, 111th U.S. Colored Infantry · Edited by Glenn Robins
The Story of a Thousand: Being a History of the Service of the 105th Ohio Volunteer Infantry in the War for the Union, from August 21, 1862, to June 6, 1865 · Albion W. Tourgée, Edited by Peter C. Luebke
The Election of 1860 Reconsidered · Edited by A. James Fuller
“A Punishment on the Nation”: An Iowa Soldier Endures the Civil War · Edited by Brian Craig Miller
Yankee Dutchmen under Fire: Civil War Letters from the 82nd Illinois Infantry · Translated and Edited by Joseph R. Reinhart
The Printer’s Kiss: The Life and Letters of a Civil War Newspaperman and His Family · Edited by Patricia A. Donohoe
Conspicuous Gallantry: The Civil War and Reconstruction Letters of James W. King, 11th Michigan Volunteer Infantry · Edited by Eric R. Faust
Johnson’s Island: A Prison for Confederate Officers · Roger Pickenpaugh
Lincoln’s Generals’ Wives: Four Women Who Influenced the Civil War—for Better and for Worse · Candice Shy Hooper
For Their Own Cause: The 27th United States Colored Troops · Kelly D. Mezurek
Pure Heart: The Faith of a Father and Son in the War for a More Perfect Union · William F. Quigley Jr.
“Our Little Monitor”: The Greatest Invention of the Civil War · Anna Gibson Holloway and Jonathan W. White
“This Infernal War”: The Civil War Letters of William and Jane Standard · Edited by Timothy Mason Roberts
“This Infernal War”
The Civil War Letters of William and Jane Standard

E DITED BY Timothy Mason Roberts

The Kent State University Press Kent, Ohio
© 2018 by Timothy Mason Roberts
All rights reserved
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 2017016302 ISBN 978-1-60635-335-6 Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Standard, William M., 1822- | Roberts, Timothy Mason, 1964-editor.
Title: “This infernal war” : the Civil War letters of William and Jane Standard / edited by Timothy M. Roberts.
Other titles: Civil War letters of William and Jane Standard
Description: Kent, Ohio : The Kent State University Press, [2018] | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017016302 (print) | LCCN 2017016133 (ebook) | ISBN 9781631012723 (ePub) | ISBN 9781631012730 (ePDF) | ISBN 9781606353356 (hardcover : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Standard, William M., 1822---Correspondence. | Standard, Jane, 1828---Biography. | United States. Army. Illinois Infantry Regiment, 103rd (1862-1865)--Biography. | Soldiers--United States--Correspondence. | Husband and wife--United States--Correspondence. | Copperhead movement. | United States--History--Civil War, 1861-1865--Protest movements. | United States--History--Civil War, 1861-1865--Personal narratives. | Public opinion--United States--History--19th century. | Farmers--Illinois--Fulton County--Biography.
Classification: LCC E505.5 103rd (print) | LCC E505.5 103rd .S75 2017 (ebook) | DDC 973.7/473092 [B] --dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017016133
22 21 20 19 18       5 4 3 2 1
This book is dedicated to Dorothy Standard Currens, 1912–1987
Contents

Editorial Practices, Sources, and Acknowledgments
Introduction
1 “Nobody knows anything about it but them that has the trial”
2 “I cramped a darkie and a mule”
3 “Talk of war up at home”
4 “I am willing to be governed by your judgment”
5 “This is no place for boys. They soon go to destruction”
6 “Mown down like grass”
7 “Good Lincoln times by gravy”
Epilogue
Notable Individuals in the Standards’ Correspondence
Appendix
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Editorial Practices, Sources, and Acknowledgments

The Standards’ letters came into the possession of Dorothy Standard Currens (née Dorothy Ann Standard), the Standards’ great-granddaughter, in 1936. A recent University of Illinois graduate, Dotty Standard carefully removed the letters from their mailing envelopes and ordered and numbered them. For the next few years she submitted samples and book proposals to publishers, though without success. One literary agent wrote that the letters “are interesting to read, but there is no drama about them and they do not touch any high spots in the war or at home. I am certain that publishers would demand that in such material.” 1 Dorothy had the letters microfilmed in the 1970s. In 2011, in light of the Civil War’s sesquicentennial and to honor his mother, Dorothy’s son, Ron Currens of Atlanta, contacted the editor, a history professor at Western Illinois University in Macomb, near the Standards’ community in Lewistown, about the possibility of editing the letters for publication, and provided the editor with the microfilm. Ron’s father, Ronald Currens Sr., had graduated from what was then Western Illinois State Teachers College in 1923. In 2013, Currens gave the original letters to the Kenan Research Center of the Atlanta History Center (AHC), which posted them online at http://ahc.galileo.usg.edu/ahc/search , keyword “Standard.” Most of the original letters are quite legible, especially William’s, except a few he wrote in pencil at the bottom of letters from Jane. Some, especially messages by the Standards’ children, are more challenging. Thankfully, neither of the Standards resorted to the common nineteenth-century practice of “crossing” their letters—that is, of trying to save paper and expense by turning a letter ninety degrees and writing across the message already written. Both the microfilm and the AHC online copies of the letters have been used for their transcription.
The letters have been edited to reveal their historical significance and reduce repetition and confusion to the reader. Occasional profanities, racial epithets, and colorful colloquialisms have been retained to give a sense of prevailing contemporary attitudes and speech patterns, and some of the original spelling has also been preserved to show the Standards’ writing style. However, to clarify the writers’ meaning, substantial corrections have been made to the punctuation and grammatical construction of the letters, and to some of the spelling. Paragraph breaks have been added to indicate clear changes of subject. Silent corrections have been made to capitalization to mark the beginning of sentences and indicate proper nouns. Punctuation has likewise been added or modified to clarify the sense of the text by setting off clauses and sentences and by adding apostrophes into contractions and possessives. Silent corrections have also been made to regularize the spelling and capitalization of common words. For example, months and days of the week have been capitalized; compound words and certain prefixes and suffixes have been closed up; and final consonants have been doubled before adding suffixes. O