Michigan War Studies Review - book reviews, literature surveys, original essays, and commentary in the field of military studies

2012-009

7 February 2013

Digital archive by William B. Boardman, Madison Heights, MI

"Pretty Well Worn Out"—The Journey of a Civil War Soldier:
A Digital Archive of the Letters of William Hamilton

Descriptors:

Volume 2012, 19th Century, US Civil War

Introduction

In the past generation or so, many Civil War historians have turned their attention from traditional battle narratives and political histories to cultural and social facets of the war. Individuals, previously lost in the "undistinguishable mass of 'The People,'"[1] are increasingly recognized for the important role they played. Although, from North to South and coast to coast, the war touched all of America's thirty-one million inhabitants, both free and slave, the military side of things was the central point from which all else radiated, and at its heart was the common soldier.

The lives of common soldiers were often overshadowed by the deeds and words of their superiors. Postwar memorials routinely list officers, but rarely enlisted men, unless they died in battle. Many regiments were raised at the county level and comprised men of similar origins, often neighbors or relatives. Despite this apparent homogeneity, the man, of course, came to the war with their own distinct background, strengths, and failings. Regardless of shared regimental experiences, their personal reactions to the incidents and ordeals of a soldier's life varied widely. Some were heroes, others deserted. Most were typical citizen soldiers who simply did their duty so they could go home. But the hard hand of war transformed them all in unexpected ways.

On 3 September 1862, William Hamilton, a thirty-eight-year-old Harrisburg lawyer, enlisted in the 2nd Pennsylvania Reserve Volunteers. He was old by soldiering standards and his profession should have enabled him to avoid military service or at least improve his rank. Nevertheless, he joined as a private and served with distinction until May 1864, when his regiment was disbanded and he transferred to the 191st Pennsylvania Veteran Volunteers for continued service in the Army of the Potomac (see archive items 134–35).

The 2nd Pennsylvania had been formed in 1861 and called to the Washington area in late July to bolster the Union army in the aftermath of the First Battle of Bull Run. It was nearly destroyed during its first week around Washington, not by Confederate forces, but by internal problems and the system of mustering Union forces. Its men, reluctant to serve outside Pennsylvania to begin with, could not even draw army rations because they belonged to a state unit not yet mustered into federal service. Only four hundred of his unit's original thousand men remained to be (at last) sworn into federal service two weeks after leaving Harrisburg. The rest returned home to join other units on more favorable terms and just deserted altogether.

William Hamilton's brother John served in another Pennsylvania regiment around Washington and his letters home exemplify the rock-bottom morale and ragtag state of the Army of the Potomac at the time. Rather than asking about home and family as he did later in the war, John complains heartily, especially about drill, poor weather, and lack of pay. A volunteer caught up in the heady patriotic fervor of the war's early days, he quickly got more than he had bargained for and recognized the gap between expectations and reality that soldiers faced during the Civil War (see items 1, 3).

All three Hamilton brothers eventually saw military service, but William's appears to have been the longest and hardest. His letters reveal his transformation from a typical raw civilian volunteer into a seasoned veteran. By the time he joined his regiment in 1862, it had already seen action in the Peninsula campaign and taken very heavy casualties at Mechanicsville and Gaines' Mill—nearly forty were killed and fifty wounded or taken prisoner. Hamilton was atypical in joining his regiment as a replacement, since standard Union practice was to create new units rather than replace casualties. He reached the regiment sometime during the Antietam campaign, but missed its engagements, being detained, to his disappointment, as an adjutant's clerk for a week or two owing to his legal training. When finally released from desk duty, he wrote that he was excited to be rejoining his regiment (item 10).

The adjustment to army life was difficult for William as it was for many others. Like his brother John, he complains in his first letters home about predictable irritants like poor quality clothing; the men's boots were "not fitting right." At the same time, he was proud of his unit's growing proficiency at drill and the excellence of its officers. He was so motivated that he studied a drill manual during his off hours. Perhaps most surprisingly, given the paucity and vileness of army rations, Private Hamilton was quite content with the food. Unlike other companies, his own always had plenty of good food. He noted that he had never eaten so well and even managed to gain fifteen pounds. All told, Hamilton successfully adjusted to army life. But he was a more mature soldier than most, better educated, and fortunate to belong to a veteran unit with more than a year's field service (item 3).

Over the next three years, Hamilton adjusted well to camp life and campaigning.[2] He writes frequently about the mail service, politics, and pay, which was always in arrears, sometimes as much as five months—a problem that plagued his regiment throughout the war.

Correspondence was so important to Hamilton that even in battle he had ink in his pocket, pens in his cartridge box, and paper in his knapsack. Since he so enjoyed sending and receiving letters, the erratic mail service was a serious matter. But most of the time he received regular mail, some letters even reaching him within three days. The only serious interruptions occurred in the middle of heavy campaigning, such as at The Wilderness. Even then, his mail was barely two weeks late. Nevertheless, Hamilton thought that "post office affairs are managed in a rather primitive character" and worried about mail tampering. He believed his letters, both sent and received, were searched for valuables by "scoundrels." When he had money to send home, he divided it into several parcels.

Besides the typical money and mail concerns, soldiers in Hamilton's regiment took a great interest in politics. Letters and newspapers from home kept the troops abreast of state and local political developments, spurred sharp debates, and prompted firm opinions about government representatives. Elections feature prominently in Hamilton's letters. Though he does not mention national elections per se, he wrote in November 1864 that several regiments had been sent home to vote (item 155).

As an adjunct to free political debate, the men also liberally praised or damned their officers—at least around the campfire. The more seasoned the troops, the more critical their judgments. Gen. Joseph (Joe) Hooker came in for especially harsh criticism from the Pennsylvania troops. His report after the battle of Mechanicsville cast the Pennsylvanians in a negative light, ensuring that he was ever after "most heartily hated by the whole Reserve Corps." On 21 June 1863, a week before Gettysburg, Hamilton wrote that "'Fighting Joe' is completely in the dark as to the whereabouts of Lee's army" (item 67). This was the voice of a veteran, not some green recruit.

The surest sign of Hamilton's veteran status was his ability to differentiate the regular, somewhat boring, rhythm of troop movements designed to outmaneuver the enemy from those that presaged imminent action. Without tempting fate by explicitly stating that he felt a battle was looming, he would write his brothers that he was well, that his regiment had drawn individual rations and disengaged from the supply wagons. His brothers, being soldiers too, knew the signs only too well. In this indirect manner, William accurately forecast most of the major engagements he took part in: Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, the Wilderness, Spotsylvania Courthouse, Cold Harbor, Five Forks, and Appomattox Court House. Only at Fredericksburg, his first major engagement, did he fail to foresee the coming carnage, but at that point he had been in the army scarcely four months (items 20–21).

What motivated men to join the colors? Abolition, vengeance, patriotism, preservation of the Union, bounties, community pressure, and eventually the draft are obvious reasons frequently cited in the scholarship, but the soldiers themselves sometimes expressed very different motives. Thirty years later, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., an abolitionist, insisted on a deeply held belief "on both sides that a man ought to take part in the war unless some conscientious scruple or strong practical reason made it impossible." Although a man of no mean background, Holmes served in the line as a junior infantry officer in many Eastern campaigns, sustaining several wounds. He denied that community pressure obliged men to enlist, seeing instead a world where "it is required of a man that he should share the passion and action of his time at peril of being judged not to have lived."[3] Personal honor, perhaps born of the romanticism he saw in war, compelled Holmes and men of his social class to serve.

Why common soldiers like William Hamilton decided to serve is harder to discern. His letters do not directly address the issue of motivation. Was he attracted by a sense of adventure or the romanticism of war that some clearly felt? Recall Hamilton's excitement early on at being reunited with his regiment after his duty as a clerk. He often comments on the landscapes he moved through. In November 1862, he wrote that the area along the Rappahannock River was beautiful, but "sadly needs cultivation … looking dilapidated" (item 14). Had he enlisted to protect hearth and home? This was clearly a concern for him during the Gettysburg campaign. When he got word that his mother's home near Harrisburg was in Lee's path, he wrote expressing apprehension over her safety. The war was no longer an adventure, but a real danger to self, friends, and family.

Army life made all soldiers part of a fraternity, especially those who had seen combat, which was the experience that separated them from everyone else. "[T]he generation that carried on the war has been set apart by its experience .… [I]n our youth our hearts were touched with fire." Those who had not faced shot and shell were somehow lesser men. "The soldiers who were doing their best to kill one another felt less of personal hostility, I am very certain, than some who were not imperilled by their mutual endeavors."[4]

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. eloquently described the emotions of soldiers in battle, where "common sense … assail[ed] them in times of stress" when faced with seeming impossibilities. Fear was everywhere. Time and again the men conquered that fear in the face of certain death. Visiting sites like Burnside's Bridge at Antietam, Marye's Heights at Fredericksburg, or the perfect killing field of Pickett's Charge at Gettysburg, one wonders what could induce men to stare death down. Holmes called it "faith … that unspeakable somewhat which makes him capable of miracle, able to lift himself by the might of his own soul, unaided, able to face annihilation for a blind belief."[5] Besides faith, there was, too, simple courage or a sense of personal honor—the same honor that led Holmes himself to enlist.

Hamilton expresses a personal reaction to only two battles. The first was Fredericksburg (December 1862), his baptism of fire. He took part in the attack on the Confederate right flank and his regiment made the Union assault's deepest penetration until counterattacks pushed it back to its starting point. He scribbled a short, barely legible note the next day to say that he would "write fully [of the battle] if my life is spared." His fatalism here was the result of an asymmetrical bloodletting often seen as the Union precursor to Pickett's Charge. Indeed, Union forces at Gettysburg chanted "Fredericksburg" after they shattered the Confederate charge. The second instance occurred on 5 July 1863 at Gettysburg when Hamilton again wrote another hasty note to say he was "safe so far but for how long there is no telling" (item 78).[6] As at Fredericksburg, he expresses a certain pessimism about the future. As fate would have it, he spent nearly two more years engaged in the hard campaigning and bloody battles that took the Army of the Potomac to the lines at Petersburg.

On 15 March 1865, Hamilton hinted at an impending battle when he wrote his brother Boyd that his company had just drawn twelve days of food and sent away all excess baggage. He and the rest of V Corps engaged the Confederates at Lewis's Farm on 29 March, at White Oak Road on 31 March, and most decisively at Five Forks on 1 April. Over the next week, they harried the Army of Northern Virginia's retreat from Five Forks to Appomattox Station. On the morning of 9 April, Hamilton's regiment deployed for battle along with the rest of V Corps before Appomattox Court House. Fighting broke out at dawn, but Hamilton was able to pause long enough to write that he was "pretty well worn out, sleeping an hour or two at a time and never resting" (item 180). News of Lee's surrender reached them as his brigade was preparing to assault a Confederate position. William Hamilton's war was over. The stark contrast between the exuberance of his 1862 letters and the weariness evident in the 1865 letters is moving testimony of his transformation from a raw but eager recruit into a veteran of three years' hard campaigning ready to go home at last.[7]

Technical Note:

The William Hamilton Papers comprise approximately 220 documents in two bound volumes. Each document is hinged and attached to blank pages. The front of each page is stamped with a number in black ink (usually the lower left corner). All images in the digital archive were made with a Sony Cyber-shot DSC-W170 camera in the Manuscript Reading Room at the Library of Congress. No flash was used—standard fluorescent room lighting only. Original images are in jpeg format. All images are 1920 x 1080 (72dpi, 24-bit RGB) and have been processed with Photoshop CS5. Some have been lightly sharpened. All are true color; there has been no color or contrast correction.

The Archive

1861: Items 1–3

Abbreviations:

BH: [Adam] Boyd Hamilton, William's brother
JH: John Hamilton, William's brother
LC: Library of Congress

August

Item 1 (4 pp.): JH to BH, 30 Aug 1861, Washington. LC nos. 75–76.