Civil War Letters

Letters From Ohio Inf.

 This collection of letters from regiments that served with the Ohio 68th, the regiment in which my Great Great Great Grandfather Henderson J. Hunter. While the connection to my own relative is what ties these letters together, the striking discordance between the terrible acts of war surrounding them on a daily basis and the sanguine nature of their letters shows how soldiers found solace in the few humane actions they had the luck to encounter or by some force of providence enact themselves.

This letter depicts how soldiers hardened themselves to the trials of war. Even in a position of exhaustion W.S. Hubbell keeps a sole focus on bettering the state of the war for the north.

As with the previous letter it doesn't seem to fit the criteria of "sanguine nature," and that it because it doesn't. It does however, provide a sort of explanation of what sort of terrible occurrences the soldiers are faced with when they find the aforementioned humane actions.

 In this letter W.R. Snooke describes how the kindness of General McPherson affected not only him but the whole of the 17th regiment which he commanded. With direct reference to the horrors of the war the weight held by such slight kind actions is truly explicated.

 While the previous letter shows the kindness shown in the ranks this one shows the personal import that these letters — the soldiers connection to the "real" world — held. It also shows what reasons soldiers found to keep fighting after their original reason for fighting had faded from their minds.

 The previous letters thoroughly explicated the kindness shown to the soldiers but some found their call to be an actor of kindness themselves. This letter shows a slaveholder who, while not having a total change of heart in his view of slaves, finds in himself enough value in slaves as humans to help one out of their own predicament.