While serving in the Union Army in 1862 George wrote home rather infrequently, it appears. Letters were an emotional mainstay for soldiers but also for families back home. No word from their soldier for an extended period of time could easily cause them to worry that he had been killed or seriously wounded. In this letter George asks Elizabeth to write more frequently. This long letter is remarkable in that he discusses his political position in line with the Democratic Party which supported a negotiated peace and separation from the Confederacy. He states several times that he has no concern about freeing the slaves even though he also states that he isn’t in favor of slavery.
The last page is very touching. George asks his wife to kiss the children for him and to tell them to be good. He must have had the real possibility of death in the back of his mind and was obviously helping to prepare Elizabeth and the children for that possibility.
Note: this letter contains language that today is considered racist. I include it for historical purposes, not to offend anyone. This language does not reflect my own views.
The number at the head of each section indicates the page number. The original spelling has been retained including misspellings.
No. 2
Camp Chase Oct 19th 1862
Dear Wife
Again the Sabath day has come and I take the opportunity to write to you. Our company has gone to the brige that is all that are able to go unless they are left for camp guard. There is about thirty of our company sick. I do not have to go so I am exempt from guard duty & I have got the day to myself and shall not even have to answer to roll call until tomorrow night. I can tell you it makes some difference with me and I like the plan of going to bed every night I do not doubt but what you will believe this last statement). We went to Washington yesterday to be reviewed by Genl. Casey & Banks it was a very fine affair the review was held on Capitol Hill and I had a better chance than I ever have had before to see Washington it looks very nice in the neighborhood of the Capitol. The grounds around the building are beautiful it is enclosed by an iron fence and the trees a great many of them are varieties that I never saw before. I wish you could see it and I hope that sometime you will have a chance. I am well and so are all the boys from east side. I have told Henry Warnock a good many times that his people want him to write and I told him last night and he says that he has writen three letters one to Matthew and two to Mr. Thorp and has got no answer. He wants
2/ those answered before he writes. He is well and has not been sick a day since he has been here that I know of. I have written to uncle Ike [Isaac] to Horace Yale and to little Ike but I get no answer from any of them. I hear from Meriden that I have got be an abolitionist. I am not and I never shall be. I am a Democrat and in the fullest sense of the word. I do believe in Equal and Exact Justice to all men of whatever State or Persuasion Religious or Political and I do believe in asking nothing but what is Right and in submitting to nothing that is wrong. I want this war to come to an end and hoe that when it does and that that Slavery will end with it. The North did not take up arms against the South until they made an attack upon us and now because they cannot have their own way they would raise a black flag and make it a war of extermination. If Congress has got the power to confiscate the nigers I don’t care how quick it does it and sends them out of the country with Greely Garrison Philips and the rest of the agitators and give such men niger enough but I must stop here I have written almost a page on a subject that you care nothing about. If I was only out of the mess at home and about my own business they might niger it to their hearts content. But here I am and if ever take prisoner by the fiends what can I expect. If it comes to a war of extermination there will
3/ be some such fighting as the wourld never saw before. The South may win and If it does our whole nation is ruined as it is it is takeing some of our best men. The army takes the best men in the country the Government does not want the aged or the decrepit it is takeing them that are in the prime of manhood and without doubt fifty thousand of our soldiers have fallen either by disease or by the bullets of the enemy to say nothing of the thousands that are made for ever useless by wounds and diseases that will follow them to the grave and all about what, about some thing that might have been settled without the fireing of a gun. If both sides had been willing to have rendered Equal and Exact Justice, but it is with nations individuals a man will sometimes ruin himself for the sake of haveing his own way and so will a nation. I hope I shall be home by another spring, but I can see nothing now that indicates it and I do not see the war is any nearer a close than it was two years ago but even if I have to stay the whole term of my enlistment I will be satisfied if I can go home at last in as good health as I left it. If I was only there now and knowing as much as I do now I should say let them go that like it. I cannot see how anyone that has been once should want to go again—even if it was in times of peace and I could make as much here as anywhere. I should not like it and I don’t suppose I should like my
4/ reputation in which there is as much restriction as there is here. If I was out of it and with my present feelings the bate would have to be a good one to get me again. There is some men in the regiment that I do not know what they are kept here for unless it is to die. When a man is so near gone as to be of no use why not let him go home and give him a chance to get well if he can. Liby if I do get home I will never leave my family voluntarily to go on any such an expedition again. I long to see you all Fredy and Samuel must be good boys and help Mother all they can and so must Josephine. Tell her to be a good girl. Father hopes he shall live to come home again and he wants to have them all be good children. Take good care of little Willie the dear little fellow. How I wish I could see you all you had not better send Sam to school this Winter but get Fred & Phina some good warm clothes and make all of the little fellows as comfortable as you can. There is no need of my telling you too. I know you will kiss them all for me. I wish you would write oftener it seems so long between your letters and you don’t know much good it does me to hear from home. If you will mark your letters as I told you in my last and as I mark mine we shall know if we get all the letters. The Quarter Master has finally got us some potatoes and we have enough to eat. If we have anything that I don’t like I can go and toast my bread and good bread we always have and enough of it. I don’t know but what they will keep us here until the end of the war all the rest of the troops that come here are marched off after a few days stay but they keep us for the stand by I hope we shall stay some regiment has got to and it might as well be us as any one else and I think if the men will only behave themselves that we may. I know it is hard work to have to do so much guard duty but we have no long marches to perform. Give my love to all enquiring friends and except a large share for yourself when you write you must write all of the news. How is the colt growing. Is he alive you don’t say anything about it write soon.
From your affectionate husband
G.H.L.
Next: The Battle of Fredericksburg
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