Between Home and the Front: Civil War Letters of the Walters Family - Hardcover

Heidelbaugh, Lynn

 
9780253062963: Between Home and the Front: Civil War Letters of the Walters Family
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 0253062969 ISBN 13: 9780253062963
Verlag: Indiana University Press (IPS), 2022

Inhaltsangabe

The personal letters of Americans during the Civil War preserve first-person accounts of the trials and tribulations of this significant period in the nation's history. These records of news, people, and emotions humanize the horrific events of the Civil War and provide unique insights into the conflict's effects on individuals, families, communities, and America. Often, only the letters sent home survived, leaving half of the story missing, but the Walters family's letters in the collection of the Smithsonian's National Postal Museum includes the exchange of correspondence between the home front and front line, a perspective not often seen in published anthologies. My Dear Companion gives us a glimpse into the poignant questions, answers, and sentiments Private David Walters of the 5th Indiana Calvary and his wife Rachel shared in their correspondence. The letters from David give details about some of the lesser-known actions of the Western theater of combat, such as Morgan's Raid. The letters by Rachel Walters at home show how she became the hub of communication for the family, often receiving missives from David's brothers, Isaac and John Wesley, both of whom served with Indiana units, and relaying the information to others. In order to gather more information about her husband, Rachel Walters turns to letter writing, including seeking assistance from Clara Barton's Missing Soldiers Office. Through her post-war correspondence with veterans, Rachel gathers the proof necessary for her and her young son to secure a much-needed survivor's pension. From the early letters describing a Civil War soldier's enlistment to his widow's struggle in the aftermath of the war, the letters of the Walters family add incomparable details to the study of the Civil War. Lynn Heidelbaugh and Thomas Paone of the Smithsonian Institution meticulously and lovingly transcribe and annotate the letters, providing valuable historical context of the events, people, and material culture described in the letters.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Lynn Heidelbaugh, curator at the Smithsonian National Postal Museum, specializes in the history of the US Postal Service. She has published essays and created several exhibitions about military mail, including "Letters Home" in Smithsonian Civil War: Inside the National Collection, and the exhibition My Fellow Soldiers: Letters from World War I, for which she received a Smithsonian Secretary's Award for Research in 2018.

Thomas Paone curates the lighter-than-air collection, including balloons, blimps, and airships, at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. Paone's research focuses on ballooning in the Civil War, as well as the use of airships and blimps in America. He is coauthor of Milestones of Flight: The Epic of Aviation with the National Air and Space Museum.

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Rachel Walters became the nexus of communication and epistolary confidant for her husband David and his brothers Isaac and John Wesley. Rachel received their letters and relayed their news to family and friends. In one letter she extended the network to her sister Phebe (Ward) Dunkin and allowed her to add passages. Through everything, the foremost audience for Rachel's messages was David, her husband and the father of their son Willard.


Rachel's descriptions of daily activities reflected and reinforced how she performed the domestic, family-oriented, and moral roles expected of a wife, mother, and woman in the nineteenth century. She wrote to David with a loving wife's affection. She also wrote with concern and advice on living a Christian life and modeled church-going behavior. She documented care and love for their infant son, nursing Willard when he was ill and finding joy in the new songs and games he learned. When possible, she supported David with mementos like photographs and material goods to sustain him as she would have if he had been home. Although the war stretched boundaries of gender norms for women, particularly for those of the middle classes and elites, and their participation in public, political, and economic life, these changes appear not to have been experienced by Rachel Walters herself. Rachel remained outside the political realm, but heard and discussed the news of violence in the community over issues of the draft. She did not participate in the events, or at least she did not record such actions that would be contrary the pervading expectations for women. She told David about the crops grown by the Ward and Walters' families and about teaching school, but neither the economic state of the farms nor taking on a job were atypical for a rural, working-class, white woman. Rachel's life and work on the home front also held to traditionally acceptable patriotic acts, namely writing letters to boost the morale of soldiers. In this way she performed her domestic roles, ensuring the sense of home and family that her letters reported to her soldier husband.

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Verlag
Indiana University Press (IPS)
Erscheinungsdatum
2022
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0253062969
ISBN 13 
9780253062963
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
230
Herausgeber
Paone Thomas J, National Postal Museum
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Mare Nostrum Group B.V.
gpsr@mare-nostrum.co.uk

Doelen 72
Breda
4831 GR
Niederlande

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