Letters to Home

Wars are always terrible events no matter the circumstances.  The Civil war however is one of the most tragic events in our nation’s history.  With the exception of the Revolutionary War nearly one hundred years before, there hadn’t been a war fought in the heartland of the United States as was The Civil War.  This brought about many complications that I had never considered in my previous studies of the war.  The main one that I’m going to talk about is the fact that most of these soldiers, when they left home to fight for their respective side; these soldiers had to worry about the security of their homelands.  In the Edward Francis Letters, found in the James Rankin Mason Papers, this fear can be visualized in the letters sent from Edward Francis to his wife Eliza.

In the letter that I came across while searching through the Rankin Papers, I found a letter in which Edward started with, “This makes the fourth letter, but I have had no letter from home as of yet.”  After reading this opening line I realized, that this is the exact opposite of the typical letters we expect to see from periods of war time.  We expect to find letters from the wives to the husbands at war describing their concern for their well being and safety.  Generally, we don’t expect to see the man at war writing unanswered letters to home with major concerns over his family that he had left behind.  Well, that is to say, that is what I expect when I look at letters from periods of war.  I found it really interesting, that not only did these soldiers literally have the weight of an entire country on their shoulders (either side representing their own “country”), but they also had to deal with the constant worry of what was happening at home.

As I mentioned earlier, nearly every war that Americans have been a part of took place on someone else’s land.  War is devastating.  It devastates land, people, and communities.  All of the soldiers involved in this war had to deal with this.  They had to not only handle the responsibilities of operating for their military, but they were always worrying about their home place.  Family farms and lands were destroyed through the battle between the Confederate armies and the Union armies.  This is not to say that the lands of Edward Francis and his family were destroyed, but that this kind of stuff was happening all throughout the country during this war.  Not only did these soldiers know and understand that this was indeed happening (as they were all responsible for it), they didn’t have a clue if it was their family farm or community that was the site of the next battle of the war.  These men had no way of knowing if their families were going to safe in their homes or not.  As was the case for Francis, hearing no word from the family you left behind to go to war for what you believed it could only add to the concern and stress that you would face as a soldier during the war.

The Civil War was chaos.  It featured families against families, Americans against Americans, and the winner of this war would dictate the nation’s path regarding slavery.  Just these circumstances would be enough to weigh heavily on the hearts and minds of any soldier.  However, with this war being fought on the home land, they were also worrying about their wives, children, farms, and other property that may be demolished during the course of the war.  I just can’t help but wonder how important of a role this played in the outcome of the war.

Sources:

Title: Edward Francis Letters, John Rankin Mason Papers.