HARPER'S WEEKLY - NOVEMBER 1, 1862
SOLDIERS' DEAD-LETTERS
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"WHY not write Dead Soldiers' Letters at
once?" says a voice at my elbow.
Only out of respect to the old logical rule
requiring the perfect definition of a class to embrace all the individuals
composing it. It is a sad truth that too many of these missives that have been
wandering about in the mail-bags are the letters, and the last letters—the last
written expression of thought or wish—of men who have dared to die for their
country. Many of these rough-looking, soiled, and torn envelopes now lying in
the Dead-letter Office, after a fruitless journey in search of friends to read
their contents, are filled with strange tales of blood and battle, or breathe
sentiments that should stir the very soul of patriotism, and fire the heart and
nerve the arm of every man who perils his life in the cause of his country's
honor. Outside, it is a shapeless and uninviting mass of worn and crumpled
envelopes, soiled with the dust and smoke of every camp and battle-field on the
continent; within, are the thoughts, wishes, last words, and dying prayers of
those who have offered their own lives to save the life of the nation.
Up to the last of August soldiers' letters,
written from camps or head-quarters, and containing no valuable inclosure
[sic], when returned from the local post-offices to the Dead-letter Office
because they were "not called for," have been destroyed, because they
could not, like ordinary letters, be returned to the writers. Armies are always
upon the move, and the ten or twelve weeks that must expire between the date of
a soldier's letter in camp and its return to Washington as a
"dead-letter" render any attempt to place it again in the hands of
the writer as impossible as it is useless. The Department having once sent the
letter to its place of destination, and advertised it there, has no legal
authority to incur further trouble or expense in the matter. Hence the practice
that obtained in the opening-room of the Dead-letter Office, of throwing into
the waste-basket all "dead-letters" containing no valuable inclosure,
which had been written by soldiers from camps or head-quarters. As the war
progressed and great battles were fought, consecrating in history such names
as Pea Ridge, Fort Donelson, Shiloh, Fair
Oaks, and Malvern Hill, and marking the boundaries of each field of bloody
strife with the tumuli of buried heroes, it came to be noticed that many of the
soldiers' letters, written upon the eve or at the close of these fierce
struggles for a nation's life, contained matter of the gravest interest to the
friends and relatives at home. Some of these lost missives, containing the
words of father, brother, son, or husband, who had gone down in the storm of
battle, or survived to tell the fate of other martyrs in the holy cause, and
which had failed in the first effort to place them in the hands of the persons
addressed, were rightly conceived to be of as much importance to the soldiers'
friends as the letter inclosing a part of his pay to the wife and little ones
at home.
The subject having attracted the attention of
Mr. Zevely, the Third Assistant Postmaster-General, who has charge of the
Dead-letter Office, and whose hand is as open as his heart is warm in the cause
of aiding the soldier in the field and his family at home, he at once
determined to have this class of dead-letters examined by a competent clerk,
and all that were likely to be of interest or importance again forwarded to the
post-offices originally addressed. As the law authorized no additional expense
for such an enterprise, one of the clerks volunteered to perform the work out
of office-hours; and so a second effort is being made to get these soldiers'
letters into the hands of their friends.
An interview with the clerk who spends his
evenings and mornings in this work brought me to a knowledge of the enterprise,
and I write this sketch with the purpose of bringing the matter to public
notice, and thus to aid in getting these lost letters into the hands of those
for whom they were intended. I learn from the gentleman who has charge of
the work that four or five hundred letters a day of this class come into the
Dead-letter Office. As they are opened, all soldiers' letters containing no
valuable inclosure are placed in his hands, and after office-hours he proceeds
to examine them, and select such as can be again sent to the local post-offices
with some prospect of reaching the parties addressed. Each letter thus re-sent
is entered upon a blank form addressed to the postmaster, and charging him to
use "all diligence to secure its delivery." This form contains not
only the name of the person addressed on the envelope, but the name of the
writer and of the place where the letter was dated. This schedule, or catalogue
of letters, is to be conspicuously posted for one month, and any letters upon
it that are not delivered in that time are to be returned to the Dead-letter
Office at Washington, to be destroyed. The whole
thing is a work of grace on the part of the Postmaster-General, there being no
charge made for the second transportation of the letters or their delivery at
the local post-offices. This being the case, it is proper to add, for the
benefit of the Department, and to save people from unnecessary trouble, that it
is quite useless to address inquiries to anyone in the General Post-office
respecting letters of this description. No record is kept of them, and those
not re-sent are immediately destroyed. Anyone looking for such a letter, known
to have been advertised at a local post-office and returned as "dead"
to Washington, should watch the posted catalogue of "Soldiers'
Letters," which, for the smaller offices, is forwarded at the close of
each month, and once a week or fortnight to the large city offices.
With a proper care not to violate the
confidence and privacy peculiarly strict in this office, I have been allowed to
notice the character of some of these letters. Here is one written by T. F. H.,
Lieutenant-Colonel Fifth Ohio Cavalry, and very fully and carefully directed,
yet it has failed to reach its destination; and lest a second effort should
prove as fruitless as the first, I am permitted to make an extract, in the hope
that it may reach the eyes of the bereaved parents. The letter is written from Zanesville,
Ohio, under date of May 27th, and addressed to Mr. and Mrs. Elliott,
Baleyville, near Minneapolis, Minnesota, and reads thus:
FRIENDS,—On the evening of Monday, April 7,
1862, about five o'clock, after my regiment had been halted in its pursuit of
the fleeing hordes of rebels, I rode slowly around the field, meditating on the
result of that bloody action [Shiloh], and observing the effect of the
"bolts of war" on the dead bodies which covered the ground. Various
were the attitudes and expressions of the fallen heroes; yet as I rode along
one smooth-faced lad, whose features were lit up by a smile, so attracted and
riveted my attention as to cause me to dismount and examine him. His uniform
was neat as an old soldier's, his buttons polished, his person clean, his hair
well combed, lying squarely on his back, his face toward the enemy, his wounds
in front, from which the last life-drops were slowly ebbing, his hands crossed
on his breast, and a peaceful, heavenly smile resting on his marble features. I
almost envied his fate as I thought,
“How sleep the brave who sink to rest”
By all their country's wishes blest!
By fairy hands their knell is rung,
By forms unseen their dirge is sung;
Lo! Honor comes, a pilgrim gray,
To bless the turf that wraps their clay,
And Freedom shall a while repair
To dwell a weeping hermit there!"
I asked the by-standers who that lad was. No
one could tell. Hoping to find some mark on his clothing by which I could
distinguish him, I unbuttoned his roundabout, and in the breast pocket found a
Bible, on the fly-leaf of which was an inscription by his mother to "John
Elliott." In the same pocket was a letter from his mother, and one he had
written to his uncle, both dabbled with blood. Pleased with getting these data from
which to trace his family, I determined to preserve the Bible and letters and
send them to you. I have since regretted that I did not examine all his pockets
and save whatever may have been in them; but my time was short, and I felt that
the Bible he had so faithfully carried would be treasure enough for you, and in
the hurry of the moment I did not think to look for anything else. His remains
received decent sepulture that night, and he now sleeps in a soldier's grave.
And now, my dear friends, I would have written
to you weeks ago, but was long sick in camp, was sent to Ohio low with fever,
and am but just able to begin to sit up. You have doubtless wept over your dead
boy. No human sympathy could assuage your grief. Yet He who guides and governs
the universe of man and matter, I doubt not, has thrown around you
"everlasting arms," and supported your faint, bereft, and bleeding
hearts.
After a while, when time shall have healed
the wounds that war has inflicted, it will be a heritage of glory for you to
reflect that your boy died in the cause of human rights and to save the life of
a great nation; and you can with righteous pride boast that he fell in the
thickest of the fight, with dead rebels all around him, his face to the foe,
and in the "very forefront of the battle."
He died a young hero and martyr in the holy
cause of freedom, and Elijah riding up the heavens in a chariot of fire had not
a prouder entrance to the Celestial City than your boy. Let your hearts rejoice
that there is one more waiting to welcome you back to the "shining
shore."
Here is a brief extract from the letter of a surgeon on the Peninsula to a friend at home:
Almost the first one I came to was our poor
little friend Dick, the bright-eyed but pale-faced drummer boy, who broke from
the warm embrace of his mother and rushed into the wild storm of war at the
first call to arms. He was still alive, and able to speak in a low voice. I
raised his head and gave him some water. He smiled his thanks, and said,
"Doctor, tell mother I wasn't afraid to die. Tell brother Jimmy he can
have my pony; and Sis can have all my books; and they mustn't cry about me, for
I think I have done right. And take the drum to them; and bury this little flag
with me—and that's all!" And that was all; and a moment afterward the
spirit of the young hero went up to heaven.
Here is a letter from a wife to her husband
in the Peninsular army. It arrived too late, and is on its way back to the
writer, with the simple indorsement on the envelope, by an officer of his
regiment: "Was killed yesterday in the battle of Malvern Hill."
These are a few examples of what may be found
in the "Soldiers' Dead-letters;" and if local post-masters will
manifest the same disposition exhibited in the action of the Department at
Washington, thousands of these lost epistles will find their way to the
rightful owners, and serve to comfort and console many a bereaved and breaking
heart.
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