Correspondence of March 1862

            I chose to look through military correspondence that took place in March of 1862.  The main areas featured within these letters are that of Kentucky and Tennessee.  Through reading these documents, the main idea that I gathered seems to be that people were either beginning to change their mind about remaining in the Confederacy, or that there were more unionists in these areas than I had previously thought.  However, as evidenced in one piece of correspondence that I will discuss further, there will always be outliers who are not in the same mindset as the general population.

            To begin, a letter written on March 5, 1862 by a Lieutenant involved with gunboats on the Tennessee River shows that union sentiment within south Tennessee was occurring as based on their votes in a recent election in certain counties.  A statement made is “The constant cry from them to me is, Send us arms and a sufficient force to protect us in organizing, and we will drive the secessionists out of Tennessee ourselves” (Gwin).  This seems a bit strange coming from an area that has seceded from the Union, but there are factors that I believe may have contributed to this general feeling in those counties.  For one, people may have found themselves facing hardships due to the war, such as a lack of food or money, and to me this seems like a reason they may have attempted to curry favor with the Union.  In circumstances such as those created by a war, there are divisions among a population where some attempt to become entrenched with the “enemy” as a means of self-preservation, while others fight to survive in different ways, such as with the guerrilla warfare we previously discussed in class.

            Another example contained within this correspondence is a letter from Ulysses S. Grant, dated March 18, 1862, which also illustrates the circumstances of people in these areas during the war.  He writes “Refugees are coming in here…for protection.  Some enlist and others ask for transportation to a safe retreat North” (Grant).  Once again, it appears that hardships may have caused people to act in a manner that would have enabled them to survive.  They may have begun to see the Confederacy as a lost cause, and decided to cast their lots with the Union so that they could get away from the desolation occurring in their region.  While I am bringing up the point that people may have been acting in self-preservation, I do not doubt that there were people who had been unionists from the start in these areas.  However, I do feel like minds couldn’t be changed that easily from secessionist to unionist, so I think that circumstances and the course of the war were causing civilians to either change their beliefs or to create the illusion that they changed their beliefs.

            Lastly, a letter written by H.W. Halleck, dated March 11, 1862, is an example of outliers of the population that go against what others seem to be finding within these areas.  He wrote “It is reported that secessionists about Hopkinsville and other places are endeavoring to organize guerrilla parties” (Halleck).  This illustrates people acting based upon the circumstances that they are placed in, but seem to be going against the grain of other sentiments within the area.  Instead of changing their beliefs about an issue, they seem to be more stubborn in their attempts at survival.  This calls to mind the acts of Champ Ferguson, how he appeared to be a man who was acting based upon the situations that he found himself in.  The men who were trying to organize these guerrilla parties were perhaps just attempting to stay true to their beliefs, at a time when it may have been easier to turn to the Union.

            To conclude, I think that the people in these areas who were beginning to turn to the Union were a mixture:  some who had been unionists since the very start of the war, but many others who were acting in self-preservation and perhaps not politically.  War times are difficult, and civilians will do what they can to survive the circumstances in their surroundings.  Those who were the outliers within these areas, the organizers of guerrilla parties, were perhaps acting in the interest of self-preservation as well.  However, they stayed true to their beliefs, rather than accepting help from the “enemy” or attempting to join them.       

Source:

United States War Department, . "Making of America." The War of the Rebellion: a Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies. Cornell University Library . Web. 7 Mar 2013. <http://ebooks.library.cornell.edu/m/moawar/text/waro0011.txt>.