Six
Incomplete Families

Soldiers' Wives and Government Aid

Military service spread through the class structure of the North, but the majority of families who had to deal with absent menfolk were of the middling sort or the working class. In part, this was simply because there were more men available from such families to fill the ranks.¹ The pay sent home by these soldiers was critical for many of their families; therefore, it became important to make sure that money reached the home folk. The United States Sanitary Commission, the umbrella organization founded to coordinate relief efforts for soldiers in the hospital and the field, pushed for a remittance system by which men could set aside portions of their pay for their families.² After July 22, 1861, Congress provided for soldiers to sign documents when receiving their pay that allowed the men to forward to their families a certain amount of their pay, with trustees moving funds through state treasurers and county clerks to the soldiers’ dependents.³

It was a system not universally employed, in part because Secretary of War Simon Cameron, who had a problematic relationship with the Sanitary Commission, did not wish it so.⁴ Consequently, soldiers continued to use the post office and express companies. They also continued to take advantage of informal networks, entrusting money to friends going home on furlough or to officers and chaplains, who either journeyed home with their funds if on leave or were capable of forwarding money through express offices. Connecticut Chaplain Joseph Hopkins Twichell, for example, acted as a northward conduit for soldiers’ pay, on occasion traveling home with the money or to Washington, D.C., where he sometimes forwarded thousands of dollars through an express company.5 Public-minded citizens beyond the trustees associated with the Sanitary Commission also stepped in to help, receiving and distributing funds to soldiers’ families in their communities.⁶

As the war progressed, bounties, additional financial incentives offered to encourage enlisting, as well as relief funds created by communities and states, reassured men that they would be able to leave their families in some degree of financial security. ⁷ These incentives might very well have been the last reassurance married men needed to go off to war.⁸ In 1861, in Rockland, Maine, some men at first hesitated to join the army because of their family responsibilities, but were then able to do so with clear consciences knowing the town would help their loved ones through hard times in their absence.⁹

At some point during the war, because of delayed issuance of army pay, irresponsible husbands, financial crises, or bad luck, some families found themselves in need of assistance. Soldiers’ wives in such circumstances might have considered any aid they received not to be charity, but an expression of gratitude or even an obligation of their communities.¹⁰ Officials, however, might have had different, sterner views, usually distributing their aid funds in ways similar to antebellum relief measures.¹¹ Restrictions designed to make certain the relief money went only to the most needy soldiers’ families limited the usefulness of the pledges by community leaders to care for soldiers’ families while requiring women to embarrass themselves by admitting to being paupers.¹²

Applications for aid frequently required burdensome paperwork as well as a public admission of poverty. Soldiers’ wives in Brockport, New York, received assistance from the town, but the Board of Relief there required supplicants to file a new application with appropriate affidavits every month.¹³ Also, some soldiers’ wives suffered for their community’s prejudices. In the Appleton, Wisconsin, area, there were “severe cases of suffering . . . by families of volunteers”; an editorialist feared that the lack of assistance for certain soldiers’ families might be “on account of class or nationality.” If that were so, he exclaimed, “then, in the name of humanity, how can we expect poor men to fight for our national government?”¹⁴

Regardless of tight-fisted restrictions, promises made during the optimistic patriotism of 1861 fell before the reality of a long war that drained everyone’s financial reserves.¹⁵ Neighborly assistance could help, and many rural women combined their households to weather their wartime poverty. When so many women faced similar difficulties, their numbers strained even those informal relief networks.¹⁶ Families also helped, with many a young wife moving in with their husband’s or her own parents’ household. Husbands might have preferred that their wives reside with their in-laws, an arrangement often considered by the men as a means by which they could not only economize but also keep alive their own familial authority through their parents. Wives could find such living arrangements financially convenient but less than ideal, as they could create forced familial intimacy wrought with tension, bickering, and emotional discomfort.17

Political differences made matters worse, as Iowan Mary Vermilion discovered when she took up residence with her soldier husband’s parents in Indiana. Mary hated disloyal Democrats and claimed to be an abolitionist. Yet William’s parents were not squarely behind the Northern war effort. Consequently, Mary admitted, “Our ways and views of life are so different from theirs that it is hardly possible that they should have any sentiments or feelings common with me.”¹⁸ But in this instance, her husband William, who acknowledged his parents “live a different way to what I want you to live if I can help,” urged her to make a change. In November 1862, he reassured her, “If you can be any better satisfied by coming to Iowa—by going to your father[’]s and taking money enough with you to make things more comfortable there, go, you shall have the money.”¹⁹

Before the end of the month William was urging her to move out, even as Mary— Dollie to her affectionate husband—became willing to stay lest she hurt his parents’ feelings. “Remember that they are old and getting childish,” she explained to William. In December, William, however, was now emphatic. “You have no business to stay with traitors Dollie,” he wrote; “I don’t regard their feelings. They don’t regard ours.” To make his point, William added, “I’ll assure you I want them to know . . . that I act independent of the feeling of all the traitors whether they lie South or North.” Now he commanded her to leave his parents behind, and Mary found more amenable quarters eventually returning to Iowa.²⁰

Soldiers' Wives and the Family Economy

By necessity, then, soldiers’ wives took up much of the burden of maintaining the family economy as best as they could and in some places by doing so shifted the norms of work behavior, especially on the farms that still were home for the overwhelming majority of Northerners.²¹ Midwestern farms succeeded based on the labor of the entire family, but women performed certain “female” chores while their husbands shouldered others. In Wisconsin, women usually did work around the house, or maintained gardens and chicken coops. Men did the harder farm work. Such a division of labor surprised the European immigrants of the time, who found it normal to have women do work generally assigned to the men in American families.²² The war, however, changed things. In Midwestern states, probably half of the farm families lost a man to the army, a problem complicated by the enlistment of large numbers of landless laborers who would have contributed to maintaining the region’s farms.²³ The large numbers of farmers enrolled in the army forced farm women into work routines usually reserved for their menfolk. In Kansas, after several years of war, farm owners discovered it was “impossible to obtain a day’s labor at any price.”24 Back east in Connecticut, labor was also hard to come by for some women left on their own. Sarah Hirst had a hard time finding hired labor to make up for the work her husband Benjamin had done before he had joined the army. Worried about her well-being, however, Benjamin told her it did not matter, that he “would rather the whole Place was like a Virginia House [run down by New England standards, that is] than that you should hurt yourself.”²⁵

Benjamin Hirst might not have liked knowing that his wife was doing hard work in his absence, but it was a sentiment shared by other soldiers across the North even when wives presented them with the reality of their financial hardships.²⁶ Some Iowa wives were too proud to ask for charity, but not too shy to assume the roles of their menfolk who had left behind the demands of their farms.²⁷ Michigander Mary Austin Wallace, a young wife with two small children, did all sorts of farm work while her husband was in the army, ranging from digging potatoes, sewing clothes, shucking corn, and in one day in September 1862 “chasing Mr. Harrisons pigs out of the corn two or three times” only to have the porcine pests return two days later for two more rounds of chase followed by her delivery of a personal complaint to their owner.²⁸ In November 1862, Iowan Emeline Ritner and her husband’s cousin Lib Alter butchered and salted a pig. “We done it up just right,” she assured her husband, adding, “We just had to do it. There was not a man on the hill that we could get.” ²⁹ Later in the spring, Emeline found a man to plow the garden plot, but not being able to hire someone to plant the crop and so she and Lib “pitched in and planted it ourselves.”³⁰

Elsewhere, women did not hesitate to take on masculine work along with their own feminine chores, perhaps discovering that their husbands’ work was no more demanding than their own. Poorer women hitched oxen, repaired their fence lines, threshed crops, and did other chores without the assistance of modern farm machinery.³¹ More fortunate women could rely on machinery that made their lives a little easier, but it was still demanding work. “Harvesting isn’t any harder, if it’s as hard as cooking, washing, and ironing, over a red hot stove in July and August,” one Midwestern woman discovered, “only we have to do both now.” With her brothers, cousins, and most potential hired hands all in the army, “there’s no help to be got but women, and the crops must be got in all the same, you know.” Another woman working the same harvest with the advantage of a reaper proudly admitted that she was “as good a binder as a man, and could keep up with the best of ’em.” Along with their fieldwork and housework, these women also gathered materials for packages for soldiers in hospitals.³²

There was patriotism even here in the ordinary labors of tending the farm. As the matriarch of these field workers explained, “we can do anything to help along while the country’s in such trouble.” And as one of the young women in the field made clear, “as long as the country can’t get along without grain, nor the army fight without food, we’re serving the country just as much here in the harvest-field as our boys are on the battle-field—and that sort o’ takes the edge off from this business of doing men’s work, you know.”33 Mary Vermilion seconded this sentiment in a letter to her husband declaring, “A sacred cause makes even the humblest labor dignified and holy.”³⁴

Beyond the usual farm work or household duties, some women took on other tasks once considered beyond their ken and once reserved to the men in their families. Women supervised their husbands’ and sons’ financial interests, often sharing information with and receiving advice from their husbands. Some of them collected their husbands’ debts and invested their pay, with a skill that encouraged the confidence of their menfolk. Ohio physician Myra K. Merrick assumed control of her husband’s lumber business after he had enlisted while continuing to tend to her practice and to her children.³⁵ Michigander Mary Austin Wallace assumed the supervision of the substantial family farm as well as the construction of the house that her husband had begun before he left for the war in August 1862; on top of these responsibilities, she still had the duties of caring for her toddler son and infant daughter.³⁶ Mary Bradbury of Illinois, a mother of several children, received frequent instructions on how to conduct her husband’s business affairs; she accepted the challenge and ended up increasing the family’s wealth.³⁷

Middling and poorer women with limited resources had little choice but to do as these women did. Esther Claflin made a point of managing the family budget in such a way that she could report a solvent if frugal existence to her husband Gilbert, who was serving with a Wisconsin regiment during 1862 and 1863. In March 1863, Esther informed her husband that over the winter she had “repaired almost everything I can think of” including “11 pairs of summer pants, so I hope they will get through the summer for everyday without buying.” She also “mended all of the cotton shirts, which makes quite a pile.” Furthermore, she did her best to keep expenses down in other ways because she had “no idea of making a store bill for you to pay if you ever get back, excepting at the shoe store.”³⁸

Some women took in laundry and did other extra work to make ends meet. Those women fortunate enough to have homes accepted boarders. But as the war consumed more and more men, there became more opportunities to earn money as they filled positions not only on the farm or in the factory. Women found work in government offices and in the schoolhouses across the region.³⁹ Beyond the farm, one of the acceptable opportunities open to women who needed work was sewing, especially in the production of uniforms for the men in the army. This struggle to provide for themselves and their families led some less fortunate women to make it clear that they wished their husbands to return home as soon as possible. If their men had already given their lives for the cause, those with little in the way of resources expected the federal government to provide them with pensions as compensation for their sacrifices.40

Worried Wives Miss their Husbands

For many wives, the very ordinary routines and concerns of daily life were regular reminders of how the war had disrupted their familial tranquility. After her husband left for the army in the fall of 1862, Esther Claflin performed her morning routines only to have them remind her of the absence of her husband. “I had the griddle hot and the pancakes ready to bake,” she wrote, “but no Gilbert came.” The emptiness of their house was especially apparent to her when all was quiet. “I listened for his footsteps when the house is still at night and once I thought (I don’t believe I dreamed it) that he came in at the door so still and came to the bed and kissed me,” she once wrote, “and another time I hear his name called away in the distance and yet so plain.” Esther had to adjust to the reality, putting aside “these dream thoughts,” but the longing she had for her husband did not fade. Even when she attended prayer meetings, she could not shake herself free of such thoughts. “I can’t hardly keep my mind on the subject of the meeting,” she wrote to her husband; “It is continually wandering away to you in spite of myself.”⁴¹

In early 1863, Esther reminded her husband how much she pined for him while reassuring him, “You may not suppose that I go to bed in my warm bed without thinking of you.”⁴² Other wives also conveyed their emotional longing for their spouses. In July 1864, Emma Spalding Bryant, another recently married woman, begged her husband John, “Come to your little wife to-night, please? She wants you so much.” Foolish love letters, perhaps, as she admitted, but she could not help herself.⁴³ Such affection found expression when husbands came home on leave. In August 1863, after a trip home Madison Bowler joked with his wife Lizzie, “You need not be so fast to lay that little matter all off on me, for you had something to do in the premises as well as myself, and, unless I am mistaken, you would do the same thing over again without much coxing.”⁴⁴ Consequently, it was not unusual for wives such as Lizzie to realize they were pregnant after a soldier’s visit home. Captain George Burchell, a Detroit, Michigan, soldier, left his wife with child during one furlough; returning to his regiment after another visit home, he bragged to another officer, “If I have not made another boy, I assure you it is no fault of mine.”⁴⁵

Despite the love shared by soldiers and their wives, there were some families who could not stand the burdens imposed by the war. There were women so desirous of male companionship that they took advantage of the opportunities presented to them while their husbands were in the army. Rumors about unfaithful wives found their way to the front, upsetting soldier husbands who were too far away to check the allegations in person. Some of the rumors were maliciously false. Nevertheless, the war created a climate in which the sexual behavior of married and unmarried women, especially those engaged in nursing wounded soldiers, became subject to greater public discussion. Bawdy married women left alone by soldier husbands could provoke general concern as they challenged their community’s norms by amusing themselves with other men. In 1863, a Massachusetts woman wrote to her son, “We hear bad stories, about George Warren Andrews who it is said visits a Mrs. Craft often & stays for days sometimes, who has one daughter eleven years old, & whose husband is in the army.” In this instance, there was no secret to keep: “They are the Town talk, at present.”46 New Yorker Ellen Goldwaite informed her husband Richard that an acquaintance, the wife of a soldier, went out dancing at a local beer hall. “Tom had ought to know it,” wrote an indignant Ellen, “but no one wants to tell it to him for fear of making him downhearted.”⁴⁷

The betrayals of such wives, not to mention the philandering of unfaithful soldiers, probably contributed to the increase in the divorce rate during and after the war.⁴⁸ Faithful soldiers’ wives, however, believed their marriages would endure and in fact survive the war stronger than they had been before their husbands had joined the army. For Emma Bryant, the absence of her husband appeared to deepen her love for him. “I never loved you as well before in my life I think as these days since you went away,” she wrote to John; “My love seems different—warmer, truer.”⁴⁹ Husbands responded in similar fashion, perhaps lifting the spirits of their wives with their reassuring words. John Pardington informed his wife Sarah their separation taught him “how to appreciate your company and if I ever come [home] the Lord Willing I think I shall not give you any cause again to set up for me nights like you used to.” Asking for forgiveness for previous inconsiderate behavior, John made “a faithful Promise before God if ever I get back to you I will live a different life.”⁵⁰ Wives who missed their husbands constantly worried about the consequences of camp life and battle. The restraints of church and family were missing in the rough-and-tumble lives of soldiers, and wives well understood their men could become unfit for their return to their civilian lives. The Bible and honest friends, however, could keep soldiers on the straight path, and they encouraged them to seek out good company.⁵¹ In July 1863, Lizzie Bowler had a first-hand encounter with the effects of rough living when a neighbor named David Piercy visited home before returning to Camp Snelling in Minnesota.⁵² Being a concerned, loving wife, she issued warnings to her husband about what she considered to be his proper behavior even when away from home. In March 1863, reporting on a good sermon she had heard, Lizzie asked Madison if he had “lost your taste for going to meetings and things pertaining thereto and given yourself wholly up to serve your country?” She reminded him that wartime was not the best time to forget about religion. Dangers “soround [sic] you on every side” therefore, she advised, “you should remember your Redeemer liveth.”⁵³

Where gentle warnings, Christian advice, and letters filled with loving concern failed to keep men righteous, threats, so some wives believed, would. Lizzie Bowler warned Madison that if he had taken up smoking cigars, there would be a price to pay. “[W]hen you come home again,” she warned, “you and I will have to occupy two beds.” Indeed, she advised, “I would rather you would visit the black ladies then learn to use tobacco. Do you hear?”54 In other cases, inflicting a modicum of guilt might keep absent men on the straight path. Mattie Blanchard was also very disturbed by the bad habits of camp life that might infect once virtuous soldiers. When she learned that her husband was playing cards, she made it clear to him that he needed to give up the game. “[C]ards can do you no good,” she warned; “you are a father now and dont bring disgrace upon your childs head.”⁵⁵

Stress

Soldiers’ wives did their best to withstand the stressful burdens left to them by their fractured partnerships. The strain could take a significant toll and test the patriotism that had earlier allowed them to send off their husbands with pride. At times, more general printed information of battles, casualties, and campaigns overwhelmed or obscured the specific personal information they wanted about their loved ones, adding further stress to their lives. For Mary “Dollie” Vermilion, the lack of news concerning her husband’s safety after a battle in which reports noted significant casualties drove her to distraction. “Last Thursday I heard of the battle at Helena [Arkansas], and up to this minute I have not heard one word from you, sweet pet,” she wrote in July 1863; “Do you wonder that your Dollie is almost crazed?” “I fear everything for you are still living, I fear you are wounded and suffering, and I can’t get to you. . . . Sometimes, I think you are safe, then again I am afraid to hope for it, almost. A soldier’s life is hard, but nothing, it seems to me, can be worse than this suspense, unless it be having our worst fears realized.” She feared God was punishing her for loving him too much. When news finally came, “I feared everything bad. I feel like another being now.” But the war and her worries continued. The next month she feared the “hard marching and hard fighting out there” where her husband was campaigning. “If you get sick or wounded, my love, way out there what will you do[?]”⁵⁶ For New Yorker Ellen Goldwaite, the inadequate mail service between camp and home was particularly vexing. “Dick, the Lord only knows what the Government intends unless it wants the Lunatic Asylums filled up with crazy women,” she complained in April 1862. “I think that it is bad enough that the woman has to be deprived of the man’s company without being deprived of reading a letter once a week.”⁵⁷

Ellen Goldwaite’s husband Richard came home in June 1863, bringing her some peace of mind. But in the meantime, she experienced bouts of depression. Ellen frequently wrote what she herself considered discouraging letters, for which she apologized, but the emotional problem persisted. In July 1862, she reassured Dick that he had already done sufficient duty to leave the army. Later in December 1862, she begged her husband to come home by the spring. “Dick, I do not care how much money we have,” she assured him; “I would rather have you come home. I would have less dollars and a contented mind—a thing I can never have while you are in the Army.” And at the beginning of the new year, she admitted feeling “so low spirited that I cannot write.” Ellen found that when she awoke in the morning she had “as heavy a heart as I could have if every one belonging to me was dead.”58

Other wives shared Ellen’s unsettled state of mind and the reason for her depression. Loneliness compounded by the usual vicissitudes of life jeopardized their mental health. The absence of her husband and the burden of being a mother placed a great deal of strain on Rachel Cormany, who suffered from depression throughout the war. Her daughter Cora contracted measles in early 1863, which compounded Rachel’s sense of being overburdened. “It seems very lonely to be all alone with a sick child,” she confided in her journal; “O! that my Samuel were here.”⁵⁹ During the fall of 1863, she felt herself at wits’ end as she dealt with Cora, recovered but still demanding of her time and her emotional reserves. “Last night & today Cora cried so much that my patience quite gave way—Indeed I wished I had never been born,” she complained to her diary in October. “I felt as if I were the most forsaken creature on earth. Indeed I cannot tell how miserable I felt. . . . I often feel my unfitness to be a mother.”⁶⁰

Aggravating Rachel’s depression was the intense longing she felt for her absent husband, alleviated only when her husband was home on furlough. In March 1864, she noted how the visit raised her spirits and provided some needed physical satisfaction. “O! I was so glad to see him, to be kissed & caressed & to love kiss & caress him,” she wrote. However, after his departure, her melancholy returned. “Friends that come in ask me whether I am sick,” she wrote. “I look so pale—but I wonder who would not look pale after parting with the dearest friend on earth. I am sure I do not look any worse than I feel.”⁶¹

Visits by soldier husbands were rare, but letters provided another way of maintaining some intimacy with loved ones. The correspondence that proceeded from the home front to the camp and back again strengthened the family ties taxed by war and were cherished by both the soldiers and their families. Wives felt a revived bond of affection in the correspondence they conducted with their husbands. Also, the letters wives received became tangible artifacts of the relationships that they remembered and hoped to continue when peace came. Mary Vermilion would reread her husband’s letters when she was feeling depressed or lonely, a practice other wives must have followed given how carefully they had preserved so many collections of soldiers’ letters.⁶² Writing to a soldier husband might also help bring emotional relief to the suffering spouse. Wisconsin wife and mother Esther Claflin suffered bouts of depression but, she once wrote to her husband Gilbert, “got over having that longing to desire to die.” Apparently, her love of family steadied her emotions. “I realize how lonely it would make you, more than I ever did before, and think it has been selfishness on my part to desire it,” she admitted; “And these boys need a mother as well as father.”63 In the end, Esther accepted her patriotic duty. “I try to be very heroic and I almost always feel glad that I can suffer with my country. I am willing to sacrifice. I don’t wish to be exempt while our country is engaged in this terrible struggle.”⁶⁴

Distant and sometimes artless husbands made an effort to cheer up their sad wives by assuring them that steady domestic patriotism was the best way to see them home safe and sound. In May 1864, Ohio cavalryman William McKnight reminded his wife Mary that he was proud of his service and that she should also feel the same. “You may feel proud that you are a Soldiers wife although your own domestic troubles may dround [sic] all such thoughts,” he informed her; “I pity you dear.”⁶⁵ However, a husband’s advice could be fairly banal. Benjamin Hirst of Connecticut must have received some discouraging letters from his wife Sarah, who wrote to him “in such a desponding way.” Reassuring her that he was engaged in a good cause, he advised her in May 1863 to “Cheer up, don’t work so hard around the House but go around and see your Friends.” If she saw how other people lived, “you would soon see hundreds of Women, worse of[f ] than yourself, and would be satisfied with your own Lot.”⁶⁶ Earlier in 1862, he reassured Sarah with the promise that their temporary separation will pay dividends in the future because the returning soldiers “shal [sic] know how to appreciate the Blessings of Home, and I think it will make us Wiser and better men.”⁶⁷ Ben’s words might have provided some comfort to Sarah, but she needed more than simple reassurances and advice not to work too hard. Whether the strain of the war or some other problem was the cause, she eventually ended up institutionalized, spending her last years after Benjamin’s death in the Massachusetts State Hospital for the Insane.⁶⁸

Raising Children at Home

Adding to the usual burdens of economic and emotional survival for soldiers’ wives were the difficulties that accompanied raising children without a father’s presence in the house. Even the youngest family members were aware that something unusual and extraordinary was happening when the war came. As Frank Coffeen, a Wisconsin man, later recalled, “I did not know what war meant . . . except that it was something that made me afraid and then Ma cried every day and Pa was going to war.”⁶⁹ The young Frank could not help but notice the burden carried by the adults around him and the tension it generated as they waited for news from the front.⁷⁰ Other children also remarked on the missing adults in their lives. During the spring of 1863, the Peirce children frequently talked with their mother Catharine about their absent father and, as she reported to her husband Taylor, they “wish for thee to be at home so they could get a kiss and talk to thee” and “they want to see thee very bad.”71

Even from a distance, fathers tried to exert an influence over the lives of their families. James Goodnow wrote detailed letters to his problematic son Sam in an effort to keep him on track, while urging him to improve himself for the life he would soon face as an adult.⁷² The absent father continued to act as a gentle disciplinarian when the son went astray, reminding him that he was obliged to continue to help his ill mother, to study, to be industrious, and to prepare for his own future.⁷³ Most importantly, he urged his son to be a good person. “I want you to begin now to form the habit of thinking of the rights and happiness of others in all you do,” Goodnow advised; “No man can be useful or happy, who studies his own gratification alone.”⁷⁴

Depending on the age of the children, this sort of advice could run from work and school matters to the words offered by Silas Browning of Massachusetts to his daughter, whom he reminded to “grow good as fast as you grow tall.”⁷⁵ Advice, however, required reinforcement with reminders of paternal affection, and fathers offered expressions of affection as well. In January 1863, Ohioan William McKnight expressed his love for his children and reassured them that he longed to be with them. “You are dearer to me than my own life but I don’t expect to see you for awhile,” he wrote, and, until better times came along, he advised them “to be good little children and do what your ma tels you and when papa comes he wil have such a good little family.” McKnight also explained why their family had to endure separation and sacrifice. “I am bound to help fight it out now so that I may have a better Place for you,” he wrote; “For if I had stayed I would not felt that I had done my duty to you or my country.”⁷⁶

Thus, McKnight and so many other fathers provided immediate lessons on patriotism to their children when they explained their absences. James Goodnow wove into his advice words to shape his son’s understanding of the war, thereby helping him grasp the nature of his sacrifice and the importance of the Union. “This is not a war for dollars and cents—nor is it a war for territory,” he explained, “but it is to decide whether we are to be a free people—and if the Union is dissolved I very much fear that we will not have a Republican form of government very long.”⁷⁷

Rhode Islander Isaac Austin Brooks believed it worthwhile to help his children make sense of the war, teaching them the meaning of patriotism and why one should love the Union for which he fought. He was living a difficult life, he told the children, but “it is the duty of us all, to do what we can for our country and to preserve its integrity even to the sacrifice of our lives, if it is necessary.” He further explained that such a sacrifice was worthwhile because “It is a glorious country, and must be preserved to our children.” Thinking in generational terms, Brooks explained, “It was given to us entire, and we must give it to you entire and you must give it as you receive it, to those who come after you.” He reminded them that the United States was “next to your God, in love, and never see it injured, or disgraced, if you have a hand, or a mind, to put forth in its defense.” Thus, all of his advice about hard work and good living, he concluded, was necessary to provide their eventual understanding of why they must “love, and serve your country” if he were not to return home.78

Children might have appreciated this paternal advice over the long term, but the immediate circumstance required them to pitch in on a daily basis in keeping their families solvent and fed. Almost-grown sons and daughters assumed duties that their years would have required of them regardless of the war, but their efforts took on additional meaning with older brothers, fathers, and farm hands absent from their communities. Esther Claflin could turn to her brother to help with the threshing of her wheat crop, but for the regular farm chores she also relied on her two young sons. The boys sold apples, milked the cow, tended to sheep, and purchased seed, setting their efforts to planting a crop of wheat and oats. In the spring of 1863, they also shouldered the responsibility of working off the local road tax for the family.⁷⁹ Some boys even assumed the manly role vacated by their fathers, quickly maturing in the face of the challenges presented by their unusual circumstances, on occasions defending their mothers from Copperheads and Indians while caring for them when they were ill.⁸⁰

For some of the younger children, the absence of fathers hurried them along to more mature tasks, taking on jobs that might not have come until a bit later in their lives. In December 1862, Elton, about 15 years of age and the eldest of the two Claflin boys, was “trying to split rails and do considerable large work”; both of them, their mother judged, “attend to work very steady for boys.” But such examples of maturity did not distract the boys from stretching the boundaries of their young lives. By the late summer of 1863, they were rebelling against their mother’s control. “You are needed here very much,” Esther wrote to their father; “The boys are running wild, and the cattle and colts are getting very troublesome.” Furthermore, Elton was “not willing to mind or do anything else.”⁸¹ Gilbert Claflin tried to answer his wife’s concerns by writing directly to his boys advising them on farm business. He also urged them to continue to improve themselves, while reminding them that their good behavior would make their father happy.⁸²

Younger members of the soldiers’ families also pitched in to keep their families solvent and fed, going beyond helping with the usual household or farm chores. In the rough Michigan “wilderness,” a young Anna Howard later recalled how most of the men in the region, including her two brothers and her father, went off to fight for the Union cause, leaving her family hard pressed. She was but 14 at the outset of the war and vividly recalled her experiences, including her deferred education, while she pulled more than her economic weight, primarily by bringing home money she earned as a schoolteacher.⁸³