Am currently co-reading and co-watching The American Civil War by John Keegan (2009) and the DVD six-disc set The Civil War by Ken Burns (1990), respectively. The latter is remarkable because of the invention of photography—the first major war with so much documented, both photographs and written down, and the interview clips with Shelby Foote (R.I.P., 2005), particularly remarkable and astute.
Am considering going on an extended (well, two weeks?) Civil War “tour”. If anyone has recommendations for a good outfit that does so (ie, guides, accommodation, travel) can you let me know?
Anyways, in the first DVD a particular letter is quoted in full. I had read it before. By Sullivan Ballou, a Union officer, a letter to his wife Sarah (née Shumway) in Smithfield, Rhode Island.
To deliberately use an antediluvian word from a prior age, such felicitous writing.
Here is the original of that letter.*
And here is the letter typed so you can read it more easily.
Postscript:
- he attended Brown University, practised as a lawyer (admitted to the Rhode Island Bar in 1853),
- elected clerk of the Rhode Island House of Representatives, and in 1857 chosen as Speaker of the House
- married Sarah in 1855
- the letter was found in his trunk in his military tent
- he died a week after the letter was written, after his leg was amputated following the (first) battle of Bull Run.
- Sarah never remarried
- Sarah did indeed raise the two boys as “honorable men”, one of them graduating from Brown University and becoming a lawyer.
*The original letter has never been found in Sullivan’s own handwriting. It is thought that Sarah never parted with it, but a friend transcribed it.