Originally aired on December 20, 1996 - In part 121 of our Civil War series, Virginia Tech history professor James Robertson says that during the Civil War, there were few gifts and celebrations but the thoughts of family and home occupied the minds of soldiers. Here, Dr. Robertson shares excerpts from some letters written by soldiers to their families.
#121 – The Civil War and Christmas
For those embattled generations of the Civil War, Christmas was a gentler, more introspective time. The frenzy of Christmas commercialism, which now begins before Halloween and ignores Thanksgiving, was happily missing then. Going into debt was not a concern at a 19th Century yuletide; going home was the major event. Thoughts of family and the home place tempered the wartime feelings of soldiers each year at Christmas time.
On December 25, 1861, a Georgia lieutenant sent an optimistic letter to his wife. “Christmas Day! Many happy returns to you and my dear mother and precious little daughter! And long before the coming of another anniversary, may the storm clouds which now hover above us have been succeeded by the pure light of love, of peace, and of righteousness. This is my hope.”
Near the end of the following year, a Virginia soldier from Charlotte County informed his family: “Tomorrow is Christmas again and here we are around our camp fire again instead of being at home enjoying ourselves with the ones we love best, as we were want (to do) in days gone by…Oh how much happier I would feel today were I with you all.”
A fellow soldier in a North Carolina unit felt the same way at the close of that year. “O! how changed (is) the scene to what it was last Christmas…Twelve months ago I was home where I could enjoy the blessings of a comfortable home of parents and friends…but this Christmas I am surrounded by warriors, cannons, guns, and all kinds of unusual sounds and actions to which I never was accustomed.”
Little in the year 1863 gave Southern soldiers much cheer. Letters in that Christmas season echoed homesickness and loneliness. A northern Virginia cavalryman told his wife in a letter: “As Christmas will be pretty well over before you receive this, I need hardly wish you a merry holiday. There is no holiday, you will say, for a poor woman with four children, a body full of ailments, and a husband in the army…I have had none of the social enjoyment and pleasures usual at this season and my mind has been much with you. I have indeed wished and prayed that you might be comfortable…during the season.”
This soldier added: “I do not care to celebrate Christmas until I can do so with my children – and my wife – (but) when will that holiday come?”
Christmas Day, 1864, was the bitterest of all. An officer told his family that day: “While you are eating your good dinner, we soldiers would have been glad to have the crumbs that fell from the table.”
Young Sallie Putnam of Richmond also found the day mournful. “With saddened mien we turned our steps toward the sanctuaries of God. On this occasion our praise and thanksgiving were blended with fasting and prayer, with deep humiliation and earnest contrition.”
War ended the following spring. At Christmas, 1865, Harper’s Weekly magazine presented an editorial to all Americans. “The Christmas greeting of this year will be more exciting than for many a year past…For the living who returned from the bitter field, there will be always at every season Christmas welcome in all faithful hearts…For the heroic dead, there will be a forever renewed tenderness of private remembrance and of public respect with every Christmas season…Among such feelings, hate and vindictiveness have not share.”
Throughout the Christmases of the Civil War, gifts were few and celebrations were limited. Yet the strength and love of family ties compensated in a much more meaningful way; and when the guns at last became silent, Americans cold shout with new faith: “Glory to God in the highest; and on earth, peace, good will toward men.”
Merry Christmas, everyone.