It is indeed rare to have nearly all the letters written by both sides of a Civil War correspondence conducted over several years between anyone, let alone young lovers during the 1860s. Hard campaigning made it difficult for soldiers to save their mail from home. As one soldier wrote to his wife during the conflict, “I have to burn all of your letters because I have no way to keep them.” Men were also concerned that enemy soldiers would read their private communications if they were killed or captured. “You kneed not be afraid of your letters,” wrote another, “for I take good care of them and burn them as soon as I get a few of them.”2
Several years ago, I was fortunate enough to acquire a rare mutual correspondence that provides the main framework for this book. The story found within these pages is based around 75 letters penned by Josiah Moore, an Irish immigrant and college student who enlisted in the 17th Illinois Infantry in 1861, and a young woman named Jennie Lindsay who Josiah met while in training camp in Peoria, Illinois. The letters turned up in an unheated cabin, built about 1880, on Lake George in Rhinelander, Wisconsin. I bought the package of correspondence from a business colleague who had inherited the cabin and the items it contained. In addition to the letters, the collection included photographs of Josiah, Jennie, and their families, period images of the men with whom Josiah served, and other materials. More artifacts related to Josiah and Jennie turned up later, including a worn brown leather memorial book with clippings, telegrams, and other items related to Josiah’s passing.
These letters set forth the story of the courtship between Josiah and Jennie. The romance began in the summer of 1861, as Americans were making plans to wage war on their fellow countrymen. Despite a significant difference in age, (Josiah was 27, Jennie just 19), the relationship blossomed during Josiah’s military service. Both were quite literate, and their letters are full of day-to-day details, the kind of things a man away from home in the service would have wanted to know so he could feel connected to all that was normal and familiar and good. Another thing that makes these letters rare is that they are from the war’s Western Theater (generally described as stretching west from the Appalachians to the Mississippi River), and accounts from that sector of the war are less common than those from the Eastern Theater.
Because both Josiah and Jennie wrote about so many subjects, their letters give us a unique window into this period in our nation’s history as experienced by two people who lived through it. Their writings demonstrate the impact of religion on their views, and the impact of the war upon their religion. They offer a unique perspective on a Victorian-era courtship and also illuminate the politics of the home front—particularly as Northern Democrats gained a larger stage when the Union war effort stumbled in 1862 and early 1863. This put Jennie in a decidedly difficult position, for her father, John Lindsay, was a Peace Democrat (or more pejoratively, a Copperhead) and held a seat as a member of the Illinois state senate. Josiah’s observations of the war, along with those of many of the men with whom he served, allow us to understand how the conflict changed—or better, hardened—these young men, and how their views of abolition, emancipation, and black people evolved over the course of their three years of service. One thing absent from Josiah’s letters is any reflection about his homeland, Ireland. Given that he was an infant when he left for the United States, added to the typical desire of immigrants to integrate themselves into the culture of their adopted land, this omission is not surprising.
Unfortunately, there is no published history of the 17th Illinois, a gap in the literature that made this project a bit more challenging, and also (hopefully) that much more valuable. But this is not intended to serve as a regimental history; whatever it is, it will have to suffice until someone fills that void. As part of the research for this project, I uncovered some previously unpublished information that hopefully adds to our understanding of the men and women of the period.
Regarding the letters themselves, I elected to keep all of the language in each of Josiah’s and Jennie’s letters intact except for some very minor punctuation issues. Even though some letters discuss the most mundane matters, the words were important to both of them, and particularly to the soldier in the field who longed for the most common gossip and minute details of what was going on at home. These letters were Josiah’s lifeline to the outside world, and they sustained him through illness, injury, campaigning, battle, and unending bouts of boredom and loneliness.
The original copies of all the letters printed in the book are in my possession. I did all of the transcription myself, so any errors fall on me. In a few places, the words were illegible—not a surprise for letters that are more than 150 years old—and I have noted that in the copy. I did my best to footnote individuals or especially noteworthy matters, but decided not to overly do so because I wanted the book to be as readable and accessible as possible.
Rather than place the letters between Josiah and Jennie in strict chronological order, I decided to run them in the order in which Josiah would have received them. Sometimes Josiah sent two letters before he received one from Jennie, while her response might have been en route. I believe this structure allow readers to better see the value these communications had to the individuals involved, and they will make more sense.
1 William Walton ed, A Civil War Courtship: The Letters of Edwin Weller From Antietam to Atlanta, (New York, NY, 1980), 5.
2 Steven J. Ramold, Across the Divide: Union Soldiers View the Northern Home Front, (New York and London, 2013) 52.