Grief Debate

"If Heart Speaks Not to Heart": Condolence Letters and Confederate Widows' Grief

Author(s): ASHLEY MAYS

Source: Journal of the Civil War Era , Vol. 7, No. 3 (SEPTEMBER 2017), pp. 377-400

Published by: University of North Carolina Press

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/26381450

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377

ashley mays

“If Heart Speaks Not to Heart” Condolence Letters and Confederate Widows’ Grief

On May 6, 1863, Leila Habersham strolled through her wealthy fam- ily’s well-tended garden in Savannah, Georgia, chatting with a friend. A shout from the nearby house shattered the calm. Running home, Leila discovered terrible news—her husband was dead. Confederate lieutenant Frederic Habersham had been struck in the head by a shell fragment at the Battle of Chancellorsville and was killed instantly. For the next few weeks, Leila went through the motions of mourning in a daze; even the funeral seemed but a blur. As the shock began to wear off, she clung to one particular form of comfort: the flood of letters that poured in over the ensuing weeks. The funeral service and black crepe might have been more visible signs of mourning, yet Leila selected these letters as representative of her own loss, each one saved, reread, and pasted with the others as the highlight of her memorial to Fred—a memoir.1

The letters Leila Habersham saved were primarily condolence letters, a highly stylized form of writing intended to comfort the recently bereaved. This article will examine changes in both literary form and message of condolence letters written to Confederate widows immediately after their husbands died during the American Civil War. Popular in the rising postal culture of the antebellum era, particularly among the well-to-do, condo- lence letter writing relied on sentimental rhetoric and religious arguments to sympathize with the bereaved and promote spiritual growth. Yet some of the letters within Leila’s memoir hinted at an evolution in condolence letter format. As the American Civil War tore loved ones apart, white southern- ers of all backgrounds participated in condolence letter correspondence and adapted the format to the needs of war.2 Nurses, soldiers, and other witnesses at the front wrote to express sympathy but also to communicate with brevity the practical details of deaths that occurred far from home. Notification letters, as this article terms the new format, took on a different tone and duty and therefore also developed a different approach to grief, one that emphasized the memory of the dead. As deaths increased over the

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378 journal of th e c ivi l war era, volume 7 , issue 3

course of the war, notification letters overtook the condolence letter for- mat through sheer volume, though condolence letters remained popular among upper-class white families on the home front.

Why were these letters so important to widows like Leila Habersham? Certainly the intimate writings quantified the community’s love for Fred and Leila, both within the meaning of the words and in the sheer num- ber of letters. Each letter assured Leila of her place within her network of loving family and friends even without her marriage. Yet they also took on another significance: while acknowledging Leila’s past love and pres- ent tragedy, they provided her a roadmap for the future. Public mourn- ing rituals prescribed widows’ outward behavior, but these private letters allowed friends and family to articulate clearly how white southern society expected widows like Leila to feel about their losses.

An interplay between compassion and coercion permeated the carefully written—and carefully read—pages. On the one hand, the intimate and private conversation permitted great freedom of expression to both writer and reader that allowed two individuals to explore the depths of compas- sion in a time of crisis. Authors could open their hearts and freely express the depths of their grief and their expectations for grieving without fear of public embarrassment. On the other hand, the intimacy and privacy inher- ent in letter writing also lent coercive power to the instructions the writers offered on how to grieve and interpret loss. Writers were often close fam- ily and friends to whom readers, especially widows, might turn for future financial or social support, so widows had vested interests in complying with these recommendations.

Historians have examined condolence letters both as impeccable exam- ples of epistolary writing and as one source among many revealing the experience of war. In many ways, they epitomized the mid-nineteenth- century cultural movement to view letters as an important avenue to main- tain personal connections and to share authentic emotional experiences. Condolence letters not only communicated sympathy but also connected distant peoples and functioned as a touchstone for memory.3 Arguably, no other type of letter more eloquently illustrates the sense of loss and tragedy that befell many Americans North and South. For instance, Drew Gilpin Faust illustrates in This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War that condolence letter writing enabled Americans to recreate their ideal of a Good Death by communicating the details of the deathbed scene.4 Yet Faust and many other scholars who have examined condolence letters tend to generalize from the letters rather than examining tensions within the writing format itself.5 The role of condolence letters in attempt- ing to regulate feelings, particularly those surrounding grief, has also

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“i f h eart speaks not to h eart” 379

remained largely unexplored. As a result, scholars have missed important tensions within the changing cultural conventions that these documents illustrate.

Focusing on letters written to Confederate widows will exclude varia- tions arising from sectional differences or subtly different expectations for relatives.6 Communities North and South shared a love of both letters and family, and both sides faced incredible tragedy throughout the con- flict. Yet, key differences influenced condolence letter writing. In antebel- lum America, cities, more often found in the North, permitted frequent mail, creating a more rapid conversational cadence than in the more rural South.7 With slow and unreliable mail, Confederate bureaucracy only worsened the struggle.8 Furthermore, the scale of death during the war placed a particular burden on white southern communities that mobilized and lost higher percentages of their populations.9 The politicization of the dead during the Civil War altered the meaning of loss for each side. Scholars primarily studying Union sources have demonstrated that the war dead symbolized both individual tragedy and national loss. By assum- ing responsibility for burial and memorialization, the U.S. government expanded its role while building a national identity based on shared loss. The Confederacy, however, assumed no such responsibility, despite suf- fering proportionately higher death rates. The adversarial nature of civil war, and ultimately Confederate defeat, pushed white southerners to seek a meaning of loss, as well as expectations for grief, separately from their Union foes.10

Antebellum Americans increasingly viewed letters as a private and authentic connection between people separated by distance. To produce “a spontaneous effusion of sincere feeling,” many letters relied on for- mulaic phrasings that marked the correspondence as epistolary and the writer as middle- to upper class.11 The combination allowed letters to fit into a culture of literary sentimentality, in which carefully crafted writ- ings induced readers to “feel right,” according to the writer’s standards. Producing authentic feelings through artificial means sparked tension ultimately overcome by the combined power of cultural expectations and individual sympathy.12 In many ways, condolence letters were an extreme version of sentimental literature, because they wielded a precise formula to produce an empathetic understanding of God’s will within an emotion- ally vulnerable reader, yet they also strove to eliminate feelings, namely the sadness, bitterness, and anger associated with grief.13 Writing manu- als like Chesterfield’s Art of Letter-Writing Simplified instructed middle- to upper-class writers on the best practices of condolence letter writing. As in contemporary sentimental literature, writers carefully constructed

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380 journal of th e c ivi l war era, volume 7 , issue 3

their letters to sound casual and heartfelt.14 “If heart speaks not to heart, in the simplest, most soothing language of nature, words will, to the suf- ferer, prove cold and unimpressive—worse than useless,” instructed Philip Chesterfield. The manual went on to identify a heavenly reunion as the “one true source of consolation,” ultimately hoping that “the anticipated joy blunts the edge of present grief.” If the dead reunited in heaven, then death was not really a loss at all; without loss, the reader need not grieve. Following that logic, as a sample letter written to a grieving widow pro- claimed, “We dare not, then, mourn for them.”15

Wartime condolence letters followed the formulaic and sentimental model of condolence letters that Chesterfield’s guidebook modeled, thereby echoing prewar recommendations for how widows should feel about and interpret their losses. This immensely popular style of writing remained prevalent throughout the Civil War, primarily among those remaining at home, often women, and with the education, writing materials, and desire. Condolence letters also typically addressed the loss of men on the battle- field or of subsequent wounds, perhaps because the chaos of hospitals most dramatically necessitated another format for communicating sympathy.16 Flora Stuart represents the wealthy, socially prominent Confederate wid- ows who typically received condolence letters. Her correspondents, though perhaps more expansive than most, also reflect the wide and distant con- nections possible for the socially prominent. Since writers dared not admit that a brief relationship or an unhappy marriage might spark something other than heartache, the Stuarts’ relationship would not have produced significant variations within the letters. Flora’s celebrity as the widow of the famous Confederate general J. E. B. Stuart likely increased the volume of letters that she received, especially from less well-known acquaintances, but the content of those letters mirrored the structure and messages within the smaller stacks of papers that other Confederate widows received.

In 1855, nineteen-year-old Flora Cooke met a young army officer named J. E. B. Stuart while visiting her father, the fort’s commanding officer. The couple married and grew their family and their social status as J.E.B. pro- gressed through the army’s ranks. During the Civil War, the Stuarts’ social capital continued to rise thanks to the general’s exploits in the Confederate cavalry. At the Battle of Yellow Tavern, however, the couple’s fortunes changed abruptly. On May 11, 1864, a Union cavalryman shot General Stuart. An ambulance carried the wounded general to his brother-in-law’s house where, in the company of a few family members and fellow soldiers, J.E.B. bequeathed his earthly belongings to his loved ones, expressed his resignation to God’s will, and passed away. Flora arrived mere hours later. Nevertheless, she learned the details of her husband’s death from reliable

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“i f h eart speaks not to h eart” 381

witnesses who recounted as ‘good’ of a death as possible in war, and she was able to bury the body a few days later, small comforts denied to many other war widows.17

In the weeks following the funeral, family and friends wrote Flora numerous condolence letters, which arrived piecemeal over several weeks due to a collapsing mail and transportation system. The messages, how- ever, would last for years to come, shaping Flora’s understanding of her

Daguerreotype of Flora Cooke Stuart. Image courtesy of the Virginia Historical Society.

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382 journal of th e c ivi l war era, volume 7 , issue 3

family and friends’ expectations for her grief; they matched their antebel- lum predecessors by sympathizing with the bereaved, proving the dead’s salvation, and urging an end to grief. Though Ella Ginnan initially delayed for fear of “intruding” upon Flora’s grief, she ultimately wrote because “my heart prompts me to sympathise with you, now that your soul is over- whelmed with anguish.”18

Friends and family began their letters by expressing sympathy for their loved one’s loss. The task proved challenging; mere words felt empty and “cold.”19 Kate Dabney lamented that she did “not feel capable of writing to you as I would wish.” All, paper and ink could not convey the sound of her voice or the warmth of her arms. Instead, she could only describe her wish to “mingle my tears” with those of her bereaved friend, hoping Flora’s imagination would bring those words to life. Even if Kate could have found the right words, she realized that limitations were simply human. Kate admitted, “I wish I could say any thing in this world to comfort you, but I know your loss & feel that it is beyond the power of any human being to do so. God alone can do that, & I feel that He is with you now.”20 Kate might have ended her letter there, but she continued on.

Words flowed more easily and with more power when friends and family recounted stories of “personal grief,” proving that they too had endured tragedy and could legitimately empathize with the afflicted widow.21 Relatives of the deceased soldier easily proved their camaraderie in the ranks of the bereaved, and even more distant relatives and friends claimed to understand the emotional turmoil of loss.22 Flora’s friend Kate McClellan believed that she could understand a widow’s pain because she “had an idolized brother stricken down by the ruthless foe.”23

Yet fellow widows, both strangers and friends, wrote with particular sincerity, from one “sister in sorrow” to another.24 When Georgia Smith’s husband died earlier in the war, Flora had written a touching condolence letter, which Georgia appreciated while rejoicing that Flora was “still spared” while others had “tasted the one bitter cup.” When Flora joined the ever-growing group of Confederate war widows, Georgia wrote imme- diately. “My dear friend, from my own heart—bowed down with sorrows, I feel for you as only the widow can feel—for what grief is like unto ours? We are set aside, and there is a mark upon us lonely & desolate we must fulfill our pilgrimage—awaiting with patience his time,” Georgia lamented.25 By the last year of the war, more and more women would come to identify with Flora. Another friend, who was still a wife when she wrote a condolence letter to Flora, became a widow shortly after. When Flora reciprocated, her widowed friend replied, “I thought I felt for you but know now I didn’t. I do now more than I can tell you.”26 As these letters show, widowhood, an

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“i f h eart speaks not to h eart” 383

inherently lonely status, emotionally connected many unwilling friends in war-torn southern communities.27

No matter the author, the attempt to establish a sympathetic connection sometimes opened the door to criticism and competition.28 For instance, fellow widow Georgia Smith let slip her resentment of the “comfort God gives you in his children—that is a blessing He has seen fit to deny me.”29 Innocent comments that “a good many of our neighbors have suffered in the same way” might have provided the reader a sense of community or unintentionally cheapened the value of their individual grief.30 As Betty Warren complained to her brother’s widow, “If I do mention my troubles to anyone they’ll say ‘everyone is losing friends now’ and that is the last they think of it; but Oh! ’Tis not the last with you and me. ’Tis very true most persons are losing someone dear to them but that don’t help me.” Still, later in the letter, Betty was guilty of that very crime. She wrote that Sallie should not grieve because she had a surviving child, whereas other possible victims of war, like Betty, did not.31 In another letter, she sent a newspaper clipping that recounted a tragic story, claiming, “although your trouble is great enough, this poor woman’s is worse.”32

Perhaps Sallie found Betty’s point of view helpful; perhaps she took offense. Either way, Betty’s letters demonstrated a central problem that threatened condolence letters’ effectiveness in a time of war. To prove they might sympathize with a widow’s plight, writers needed to show they had experienced and even overcome loss. War provided an abundance of such proof. Some skilled writers might bond with the bereaved over a sense of shared loss for a shared cause, yet more proof did not necessarily translate into better results, because detailed tales of woe shifted the emphasis of the letter from the reader to the writer. As a result, these condolence letters produced both moments of comradery and moments of competition. This slight shift in tone and emphasis could undermine a letter’s ability to con- vey the sympathy required to persuade a widow to accept the writer’s inter- pretation of loss, thus suggesting the need for a different writing format.

After expressing sympathy, many letters echoed a version of Mary Pickney’s question to Leila Habersham, “Are you trusting in God my poor Leila, though He slay you?”33 Answering yes, according to writers, was the only path to comfort in the face of deep grief.34 Yet “trusting in God” proved more complicated than simply accepting comfort. Widowhood might pro- duce antagonism toward God, with dire consequences for the soul and for society. According to many letter writers, only those who gave their hearts to God and followed His will would live forever in heaven. This gesture of religious submission, more common among women than men at the time, further proved women’s submissive status within the broader gender

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384 journal of th e c ivi l war era, volume 7 , issue 3

hierarchy. Though a husband’s death might seem an act of vengeance, it was actually a “stroke of Gods Providence” reflecting a wisdom that humans could not understand.35 Turning to the Bible for support, some letter writ- ers even transferred the husband’s authority and responsibility directly to God. Georgia Smith referenced Psalm 146:9, where God promised to pro- tect the “widow and the fatherless,” while other writers drew from passages like Isaiah 54:4–8 to cast God as a “Husband to the Widow.”36 These verses reminded widows of their continued subordinate roles within the social and religious order.37

After prescribing submission as the best medicine for overcoming loss, letter writers explained that to prove such submission widows must quell their feelings of grief. The process of overcoming emotions like sadness, anger, and bitterness proved widows’ trust in God’s will, as well as a sense of self-control necessary in middle-to-upper class society. By admitting that everyone found it “hard to resign our treasures, and our hearts will rebel,” writers offered compassion in the face of challenging circumstances but also made conformity to God’s law and social custom seem possible.38 If the writer could overcome the pain and submit to God’s will, as the Bible instructed, then so could the widow, in time. Such tests of piety were not uncommon prior to the war, particularly for women whose traumatic experiences might have tugged their nexus of morality beyond the bounds of social expectations. Indeed, Ellen Coleman cited Psalm 119, a passage praising the will of God and the unceasing devotion to that will, in order to urge Leila to “feel it is well for me that I have been afflicted.”39

Letter writers promised that a widow who submitted to God by curb- ing her sadness and anger would find the greatest consolation available: a heavenly reunion with her spouse. The hope of salvation thus trans- formed a husband’s death into a mere temporary separation—perhaps not even a loss at all.40 Yet, condolence letter writers had to first prove that the deceased husband was in fact waiting at the heavenly gates. Friends and family congratulated widows whose husbands had shown some sign of Christian faith while living, though they rarely labeled any case as hope- less.41 Since J. E. B. Stuart had converted to Christianity early in life and had long been confirmed in the Episcopal Church, friends and family assumed that his soul had been saved. Kate Dabney believed he “is where no sorrow sin or suffering, can ever reach him,” just waiting to be reunited with his family.42

Though the idea of death as a pathway to eternal life dominated condo- lence letters, family and friends assured widows that the memories of their husbands lingered on earth. Wartime offered a plethora of opportunities for men to confer honor on themselves, so that a generally admired man

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“i f h eart speaks not to h eart” 385

like J. E. B. Stuart could become “glorious champion of his Country’s rights and Liberty” in Confederate memory.43 For his loved ones, however, death would not erase the imprint of a “true warm friend.”44 Friends and family also expected widows to remember the happy moments of marriage, even recounting evidence of mutual affection.45 Such memories may have com- forted the bereaved, but, ideally, they also reinforced the expected desire for a marital reunion in heaven one day.

Writers particularly encouraged widowed mothers to believe parts of their husbands remained on earth. Through physical likeness or person- ality characteristics, either real or imagined, children carried the very essence of their fathers. While writers bemoaned a widow’s loss of a father to her children, condolence letters also trumpeted childcare as a fountain of consolation and largely ignored the great burden that such work placed on a single woman’s shoulders. Before J.E.B.’s death, the Stuarts had two children: a son, J.E.B. or “Jimmie,” and a daughter, Virginia. Writing to Flora after General Stuart’s death, Ella Gimmon noted, “Your dear little babe will be particularly dear, for never was an infant more loved by a fond Father than little Virginia, and God grant Jimmie may resemble his Father,” unaware that Virginia had passed away shortly before her father’s death.46 Even when friends and family knew of Flora’s compounded loss, they still believed her to have greater consolation than a childless widow. Georgia Smith agreed with Ella but bemoaned that God “has seen fit to deny me” the comfort of motherhood.47 According to Mary Fontaine, Flora now had a duty to complete before she could join J.E.B. in heaven, the “noble work on earth to train his children for God’s work on earth.”48 The energy a widow had split between her husband and her children could now be fully devoted to motherhood. By this reasoning, widowed mothers had both a comforting connection to their deceased husband and a renewed purpose to live in the future, much like the emphasis on a future reunion in heaven.

To close these condolence messages, many writers promised “that you will always find in me a sympathizing friend and cousin and you must call upon me if I can aid you in any way.”49 Despite friends and families’ best intentions, their offers for support were too often empty. Few writ- ers addressed the specific financial and legal problems that widows would face upon the death of a husband. Warfare, time, and distance prevented loved ones from following through on the promises they did make. Mary Fontaine claimed, “But for the uncertain state of things I would go to you at once.”50

How did these interpretations of loss ultimately shape widows’ griev- ing process? During the war, some widows wore mourning attire, while

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some did not. Either way, condolence letters did not focus on the mat- ter; they concerned themselves with widows’ intellectual interpretation of loss and the resulting emotional response. As a result, condolence let- ters seemed to suggest that widows might mourn their loss—parading black cloth demonstrated class and demonstrated a proper respect for the dead—yet they should not grieve. Writers sympathized with the emotions they believed widows felt, but the instructive bent to condolence letters offered a rationale to deny the cause of the emotion—loss—rather than the emotions themselves. Furthermore, the complex mix of sadness and anger that accompanied loss subverted the submissive, gendered position that widows were to take to their God, so those emotions could not be tolerated. The format of correspondence, which offered comfort before allowing wid- ows to express their feelings, may have forced writers into this choice. It is equally possible, however, that writers simply found more comfortable ground following a clearly delineated format and set of beliefs rather than wading into the quagmire of widows’ feelings.

Nevertheless, loved ones feared and even expected that emotion would defy reason. Rather than give in to natural emotional expression, writers desperately hoped to persuade widows from “giving way to grief.”51 To rein- force this message, friends and family cited examples of mourners whose “fortitude appears to me sublime.”52 Only fellow widows avoided drawing these comparisons. Each of the fellow widows who wrote to Flora after J. E. B. Stuart’s death recognized a common pain and pointed to the various means for comfort, but none suggested that Flora throw off her grief.53

Condolence letters remained popular throughout the war on the home front among wealthy, middle- to upper-class white southerners. These not only offered sympathy in a form that many wealthier Confederates had come to expect, but also their authorship and receipt confirmed a mem- bership within a powerful and wealthy social network. Yet, war demanded change as soon as the first battles commenced. The basic assumption that the dead had died well, at home surrounded by loved ones, evaporated on distant battlefields and hospitals.54 As a result, condolence correspondence increasingly expanded to the masses. Soldiers, doctors, nurses, and other witnesses at the front wrote to distant widows waiting at home and craving information that antebellum condolence letters had assumed—to know of their husband’s death, details of the last moments, and instructions for obtaining the earthly remains.55 Wealthy or socially prominent widows like Flora mobilized vast networks of friends and family extending from the battle lines to the home front to bring the body home, conduct the funeral, and preserve belongings; occasionally, letter writing aided these efforts, since not even the most powerful families could fully control the chaos

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“i f h eart speaks not to h eart” 387

of war. Widows from more modest backgrounds and with less extensive social networks, however, relied more heavily on letters to do this work, gradually perfecting a common format as war dragged on.56

Ultimately, wartime letter writers simply had more work to do in mend- ing these breaks between people and from past ideals than the condolence letter format permitted. The basic goal remained to comfort the bereaved, but the underlying assumptions about what information might prove com- forting began to change. Examining the changes and tensions between con- dolence letters and the new format for communicating with the bereaved, which this article terms notification letters, will reveal important changes in conceptualizing grief. The future for grieving Confederate widows as envisioned in notification letters bound widows more tightly to their roles as the living images of their hero husbands and, as a result, offered a com- peting vision of grieving that focused on memorializing the dead on earth, rather than personal feelings or piety, while continuing to minimize wid- ows’ loss and to suppress grief.

Despite the absence of a manual or set of guidelines, the basic formula for writing notification letters remained remarkably consistent while adapting to the chaos of war. Most writers were nurses, doctors, or soldiers who had witnessed or had some knowledge of the death and could best pass on details, including how the husband died, where he was buried, and how to collect his pay and personal possessions.57 Strangers and those serv- ing at the front kept their notes shorter than condolence letters, focusing on facts and details. As the war progressed, most writers had less time and unfortunately more practice and therefore wrote concisely. Yet this econ- omy of words placed emphasis on the widow’s personal tragedy rather than the writer’s sympathy, reducing the sense of competition that had devel- oped within condolence letters during wartime. Brevity even encouraged continued conversation; for instance, a nurse might write to inform a wife first of her husband’s illness and then later of his death, or writers might provide contact information for the bereaved in case “you desire eney further particulars,” which widows often did.58 To start the conversation, however, writers described and interpreted the deathbed scene, consider- ing the dying man’s suffering, care, and hope for salvation. Though writers conveyed information honestly, they parsed their words with as much care as condolence letters, revealing an alternative understanding of loss for grieving widows.59

Notification letter writers hoped to transport the reader across time and space to witness the last moments of a loved one, so writers recounted vivid and even gruesome images for their widowed readers, refusing to spare the supposedly more delicate gender. Writers described men having been “shot

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388 journal of th e c ivi l war era, volume 7 , issue 3

through the Bowles with a Minie Ball” or suffering for several days “Very horriable With the Brain Fever.”60 These details not only helped widows envision their husbands’ final moments; they also proved the writer trust- worthy. A flimsy sheet of paper was often all that connected widows to the strangers who bore such delicate, personal news. Had writers held back details, widows might wonder if a mistake had been made or if the writer left some horrible truth unspoken, like that their husband died in less than honorable circumstances. The truth, in all of its painful detail, spared wid- ows the greater pain of uncertainty or family dishonor and helped them reach the inescapable conclusion that their husbands were indeed gone.

By faithfully describing the dying man’s final moments, however, writ- ers struggled to synthesize the remaining contradiction between an often painful wartime death and a peaceful Good Death. One woman, Mollie, did not hold back any facts when writing her sister, Fannie, whose husband died from a wound received at the Battle of Chickamauga. Mollie wrote that Joshua “fell mortally wounded and lay until Monday afternoon when he was taken to Brechenridge’s Division Field Hospital.” There, a surgeon bound his wound but abandoned him so that “all the skin wore off his back, having lain on a bed of rocks.” After a surgery to amputate the left leg “above the knee,” Joshua wrote two letters begging his family for the care that the hospital could not provide him. For this Confederate private, no amount of wealth or social connection sped up communication between a chaotic battlefield and family members at home until he was beyond care. Even after describing Joshua’s extended torture, Mollie relayed the sur- geon’s interpretation that “he seemed to suffer no pain at all but was gradu- ally away from exhaustion and weakness.”61 Mollie made little attempt to reconcile these conflicting versions of death, leaving the widowed reader to decide which tale seemed most true—or perhaps most comforting.

Only when writers addressed the dying man’s reaction to mental suf- fering—his feelings about pain and death—did notification letters break from a remarkably honest telling of the facts to censor or shade the tale. When writers did attempt to reconcile physical suffering with a peaceful death, many argued that pain became a crucible for masculinity. As J. F. Jaquess wrote to George Johnson’s widow, the politician-turned-soldier “was wounded in the abdomen, the ball passing through the body. He lay on the battlefield some thirty hours before he was found and brought to our hospital.” By that time, George was dying. Jaquess wrote, “I need not tell you that he suffered most intensely, but he bore his suffering with manly firmness.”62 Even though George’s death did not neatly fit into the image of the calm and quiet good death, his death affirmed his masculinity, a trait equally valued and much more easily proven in war. George’s ability

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to suppress his feelings in the face of physical pain and death strengthened his masculinity. Perhaps most Confederate soldiers faced their deaths as bravely as George Johnson supposedly did, yet it is more likely that writ- ers omitted mental suffering unrelated to battlefield heroics or spiritual conversion. At the time, friends, family, fellow soldiers, and even widows might have interpreted mental suffering or excessive emotion as unmanly and possibly more painful to recount. One rare letter written early in the war in 1862 belies the heroic narrative that would ultimately dominate notification letter writing. When Asa Martin’s nurse, Mrs. McGrouder, wrote his wife, she admitted that Asa seemed emotional. He “could not bear the idea of going home with one arm” and almost cried at the thought. Periodically, he would “get in to histerical fits of laughing and laugh until his arm would pain him.”63 Though these few lines slipped through, on the whole the letter cast Asa’s last moments as those of a responsible and car- ing husband, focused more on the welfare of his family than on himself. By minimizing or even omitting the dying man’s mental suffering, letters like Mrs. McGrouder’s began the process of constructing a sanitized memory of wartime death that would continue long after the war had ended.

Repeatedly throughout notification letters, family and friends turned to a similar strategy—recounting the most flattering details and suggesting that moments incongruent with an ideal death evidenced a masculinity that suppressed emotions about death and loss. For instance, writers pro- vided all possible evidence to certify that the death had not been friend- less or anonymous. George Freaner assured Mrs. E. W. Fontaine that loyal soldiers rescued her dying husband from the field, delivering him into the hands of a caring widow who helped ease his suffering.64 One nurse even stressed that she tried to transform a hospital diverse in “class and colour” into a homelike atmosphere that recognized each patient’s social status.65 From a widow’s perspective, such care would have been valuable indeed. Of course, not all soldiers died in caring arms. Civil War battles left thousands wounded and dying in the course of a few days, overwhelming army personnel, hospitals, and local towns. Lt. Joshua Callaway, a teacher who had lived with his wife’s family before the war, was one of those men who died alone and in pain during the Battle of Missionary Ridge in 1863. His comrade in arms explained to Joshua’s widow that fellow soldiers had “picked him up, [and] started off the field with him when he asked us to lay him down and let him Die.”66 They obliged and were forced to leave him on the field. Rather than be blamed for abandoning their comrade, this soldier cast dying alone as Joshua’s choice, and a noble, manly one at that.

While widows likely found comfort when the truth of their husbands’ deaths proved slightly better than the horrors many imagined, writers also

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emphasized these scenes in order to assess the dying man’s likelihood of salvation. Family, friends, comrades, and caregivers all carefully recorded any useful evidence that either confirmed a lifetime of Christian piety or evidenced a deathbed conversion. Since Joshua Callaway had been a pray- ing man before his death, his comrade could simply assert, “I have every reason to believe that he is gone to a better land where there is no more war.”67 Most notification letter writers had more work to do. Authors wid- ened the types of credible evidence and lowered the burden of proof in order to make sure that, at least in letters, most Confederate soldiers rose to heaven after death. A dying man’s last words and moments offered the best evidence of his salvation. Asa T. Martin’s letters to his wife, Mary, did not suggest him to be a particularly religious man, yet on his deathbed Asa reconsidered the state of his soul. His nurse, Mrs. McGrouder, wrote that Asa asked for a preacher, who “came and talked to and prayed for him he wept very much indeed and said he wanted to be a Christian.” As a result, she felt confident that Asa’s “soul was clean and nice enough to enter Heaven that is the most of all important with him.”68 Presumably, this evi- dence was sufficient to comfort the widowed Mary. As the war progressed and those near the fighting divided their time among a rising number of bereaved families, the deathbed narrative became briefer, often with fewer details.69 Still, writers did their best to recount any last words and their impressions, even unsupported, of possible salvation. For some widows, these details moved beyond comfort to illuminate a future purpose.

Yet both the brutal means of destruction in war and even the stubborn- ness of man left many widows with less evidence of a deathbed conversion. In those times, writers turned to the man’s countenance in life or on the deathbed, emphasizing a willingness to die that confirmed both submis- sion to God’s faith and manliness in battle. While George W. Johnson lin- gered between life and death after the Battle of Shiloh in 1862, Reverend Jaquess attended to him and sang several hymns. Jaquess believed that George’s “countenance brightened up” and “there was a great change within him” but admitted that the man refused to profess his conversion, preferring to “rely too much upon a moral and correct life.” With more time, perhaps George would have declared his faith in God, but the rever- end left to counsel other patients. Death would not wait for him to return. Rev. Jaquess could only write, “I have seen many die but never saw any one die more perfectly resigned. . . . I felt that he was, “‘falling a sleep in Jesus.’”70 Such letters likely provided grieving widows with comfort and hope tinged with doubt.71

Because notification letters placed such emphasis on the deathbed scene, they presented a different message about the way widows should

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interpret loss and grief. For one, loss became more about the dead than the living. While condolence letters addressed widows’ gender, piety, and countenance, notification letters focused those same lines of inquiry upon the dying man. In doing so, writers fused nineteenth-century ideals of masculinity and religiosity to idolize a stoic submission in the face of death. This ideal was not dissimilar to condolence letters’ calls for widows to submit to God’s will and to banish their grief, yet the differences pro- duced an important consequence: notification letters emphasized clearly measurable actions designed to preserve the dead man’s past rather than to prepare widows’ souls for the future.

Authors made clear their expectations that widows would become man- agers of their husbands’ memories. After proving that soldiers died good deaths, writers provided clear instructions for widows to locate bodies for reburial and to recover any possessions. When George Johnson died at Shiloh, far from his native Kentucky, S. S. Jackson told his widow, Ann Johnson, “I have had him packed in a rough box with salt. It was the best I could do.”72 A train carried the body home.73 If no one at the front organized or paid for the transportation of the body, then notification letters provided priceless information about the burial location. In a letter to Sallie Milner, J. C. Allen described her husband Richard’s burial location as “on the farm of Capt John Alsop, five miles from Fredricksburg, in two hundred yards of the Richmond and Fredricksburg rail road, under a small Persimmon Tree, near two others graves, under a larger Persimmon.”74 Allen explained, “I have been this precise, thinking you might probaly some time wish the body sent for.” A month later, Sallie and her family did indeed collect the body for proper funeral services.75

Similarly, writers returned as many of the husbands’ possessions as pos- sible. On the one hand, this aid was eminently practical for many widows, who now lacked sources of income. Some men at the front helped settle and collect for their fallen comrades, sold items particularly valuable on the front lines, and returned the balance home to the widows.76 Most writ- ers provided advice on navigating Confederate bureaucracy. Soldiers’ back pay reverted to widows, along with any belongings in the possession of government officials. To claim these possessions, widows had to travel to Richmond or pay an agent to do so. Letter writers offered advice on how to collect the money, from sending a son with a power of attorney to having a friend or family member in the service do the work.77 On the other hand, letter writers recognized that these possessions also carried emotional attachments. Simply holding an object that had once belonged to their husbands might transport widows across time to the memory of the cou- ple’s life together. Therefore, even seemingly ordinary objects—overcoats,

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knapsacks, and pocketbooks—could prove valuable to grieving widows.78 Locks of hair proved particularly popular and accessible to many widows, since these could simply be folded into the letter itself.79 Despite every- one’s best efforts, too many mementoes became lost or left behind during the war; yet the sheer effort to return possessions, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant, once again highlighted that widows could and should take action to preserve the memory of their husbands as a part of the grieving process.80

By helping widows to preserve their husbands’ memories, notification letters went beyond reconstructing the Good Death to also revising how white Confederate communities expected widows to grieve during and after the war. Rather than bending metaphorical knees to God, widows should literally bend their knees at their husbands’ gravestones. Instead of becoming caretakers for their own piety and thus spiritual futures, wid- ows were to become caretakers of their husbands’ possessions and graves. The emphasis shifted from the widow to the dying soldier, and in effect from the widows’ grief to the husbands’ memories. In some ways, notifi- cation letters urged greater public action and agency for widows within the postwar social fabric than condolence letters had, as long as widows directed those energies to the memory of the dead. Some widows might have found the shift empowering, some detracting from their personal feelings of grief. In time, a few widows of celebrated generals would col- lect and expand on these initial tales of death in order to manage lega- cies of lives lived and nobly lost, a prospect both permitted and facilitated more by notification letters than condolence letters.81 The type of past worth remembering, according to notification letter writers, provided an important lesson too. While condolence letters argued death was a mere temporary separation rather than a loss, they acknowledged the depths of widows’ emotional pain, a fact that would not have challenged their gender roles. Yet notification letter writers acknowledged physical pain and uncer- tainty surrounding the state of dying men’s souls in an attempt to prove the real loss widows suffered in the present, while at the same time scrubbing the deathbed scene of the emotional turmoil that these conditions caused.

The changes in white southern communities’ understandings of the appropriate way to grieve would have lasting consequences for society and in particular for Confederate widows. Over the course of the war, notifica- tion letters gradually eclipsed condolence letters. That shift not only illus- trated one way the needs of war wrought cultural change in the American South but also highlighted the increasing link between grief and memory, foreshadowing the construction of a sanitized and glorified memory of

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wartime death that would in part define postwar Confederate memori- alization activities. At the same time, the continued use of both formats highlighted tensions based in both class and the writers’ wartime expe- rience over the appropriate way to grieve. The consistencies across both formats also proved significant. Neither letter paid particular attention to widows’ emotional, fiscal, or social survival in the present; this necessitates a deeper investigation to uncover the full story of Confederate widowhood. Also, a similar goal underpinned the messages within both formats: to present an interpretation of loss intended to end widows’ grief. Each for- mat sought to achieve this goal by different means, one through personal piety and the other through memory work; both paths, however, left little room for messy, discordant grief to continue after widows’ set down their letters, let alone within the public postwar discourse over wartime loss.

notes 1. See Leila Habersham, “A Sketch of the Life of Frederic Augustus Habersham,

1831–1863,” in Anna Habersham Wright Smith, A Savannah Family, 1830–1901 (Milledgeville, Ga.: Boyd, 1999), 27–202, esp. 160–76, 184–200. For more on widows and mourning during the Civil War, see Karen Halttunen, Confidence Men and Painted Women: A Study of Middle-Class Culture in America, 1830–1870 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982), 128–44; and Mary Louise Kete, Sentimental Collaborations: Mourning and Middle-Class Identity in Nineteenth-Century America (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2000). Portions of this research appeared in an earlier for- mat in the author’s works, “‘A Past Still Living’: The Grieving Process of Confederate Widows” (PhD diss., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2014) and “‘To Suffer in Silence’: Confederate Widows’ Grieving Processes after the Civil War” (MA thesis, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2010).

2. For more on the rising postal culture in the mid-nineteenth century, see David M. Henkin, The Postal Age: The Emergence of Modern Communications in Nineteenth- Century America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), esp. 11–38, 137–47.

3. See Henkin, The Postal Age, 109–11. For a general discussion on epistolary letter writing, see William Merrill Decker, Epistolary Practices: Letter Writing in America before Telecommunications (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998).

4. Drew Gilpin Faust, This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War (New York: Vintage, 2008), esp. 14–30.

5. See also Michael Barton, Goodmen: The Character of Civil War Soldiers (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1981).

6. For research on nineteenth-century widowhood, see Lisa Wilson, Life after Death: Widows in Pennsylvania, 1750–1850 (Philadelphia: Temple Free Press, 1992); Kirsten Wood, Masterful Women: Slaveholding Widows from the American Revolution through the Civil War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004).

7. Henkin, Postal Age, 31–32.

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394 journal of th e c ivi l war era, volume 7 , issue 3

8. See Richard F. Ridgway, Self-Sufficiency at All Costs: Confederate Post Office Operations in North Carolina, 1861–1865 (Charlotte: North Carolina Postal History Society, 1988).

9. See Faust, This Republic of Suffering, 273n2. While scholars have debated the significance of the casualty rate, wartime deaths occurred on top of the types of losses before the war. For proof of high antebellum death rates, see Mark Schantz, Awaiting the Heavenly Country: The Civil War and America’s Culture of Death (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2008); and Nicholas Marshall, “The Great Exaggeration: Death and the Civil War,” Journal of the Civil War Era 4 (March 2014): 3–27. Mark E. Neely Jr. highlights the limits of brutality in The Civil War and the Limits of Destruction (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007). For arguments emphasizing the trans- formative scale of death during the war, see J. David Hacker, “A Census-Based Count of the Civil War Dead,” Civil War History 57 (December 2011): 307–48, and Ian Finseth, “The Civil War Dead: Realism and the Problem of Anonymity,” American Literary History 25 (Fall 2013): 535–62.

10. See Faust, This Republic of Suffering; Gary Laderman, The Sacred Remains: American Attitudes toward Death, 1799–1883 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996); Franny Nudelman, John Brown’s Body: Slavery, Violence, and the Culture of War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004).

11. Henkin, Postal Age, 109. 12. Shirley Samuels, The Culture of Sentiment: Race, Gender, and Sentimentality in

Nineteenth Century America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 3–8. 13. For more on sentimental literature in mourning, see Kete, Sentimental Collabo-

rations, esp. chaps. 3 and 4. 14. Henkin, Postal Age, 97–98, 109–17, 94, 103; Nan Johnson, Gender and Rhetorical

Space in American Life, 1866–1910 (Carbondale: Southern University Press, 2002), 86. See also Hugh Blair, “Lecture 34: Philosophical Writing, Dialogue, Epistolary Writing, Fictitious History,” in Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres; Chiefly from the Lectures of Dr. Blair, ed. Abraham Mills, AM (New York: James Conner, 1832), 273–74.

15. Chesterfield’s Art of Letter-Writing Simplified . . . To Which Is Appended the Complete Rules of Etiquette, and The Usages of Society (1857; repr., New York: Dick & Fitzgerald, 1867), 49–50.

16. The focus on battlefield casualties likely reflects demographics and circum- stances rather than derision of death by disease. Officers in Lee’s army were typically older, wealthier, and more likely to be married, so their social circles were more likely to write condolence letters. In addition, officers were one to more than two times as likely to be killed or wounded in battle. See Joseph T. Glatthaar, General Lee’s Army: From Victory to Collapse (New York: Free Press, 2008), 188, 198. Battlefield casualties dominated the archival holdings for both condolence and notification letters, perhaps reflecting a bias in the preservation process.

17. Catherine M. Wright, “Flora Cooke Stuart (1836–1923),” Encyclopedia Virginia, last modified October 27, 2015, http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Stuart_Flora_ Cooke_1836–1923; Jeffery D. Wert, Cavalrymen of the Lost Cause: A Biography of J. E. B. Stuart (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2008), 361–63. For more on wartime burial

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practices, see Faust, This Republic of Suffering, 153–58; Laderman, Sacred Remains, especially pt. 2; and Nudelman, John Brown’s Body, 44–45.

18. Ella M. Ginnan to Flora Stuart, May 24, 1864, Stuart Family Papers, ca. 1846– 1925, Virginia Historical Society (hereafter cited as VHS). For fear of intruding, see Sarah P. Jones to Cousin, June 16, [1864], Polk Family Papers #4207, Southern His- torical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (here- after cited as SHC); J. J. Govan to Mrs. James L. Autry, January 30, 1863, James L. Autry Papers, 1832–1998, Woodson Research Center Special Collections and Archives, Fondren Library, Rice University, Houston, Texas (hereafter cited as James L. Autry Papers). For assuming pain at the death of a husband, see Georgia Smith to Mrs. Stuart, May 24, 1864, and Nannie O Price to Mrs. Flora Stuart, May 15, [1864], both in Stuart Family Papers; Eliza to Sallie Milner, January 12, 1863, Richard W. Milner Collection, box 40, microfilm drawer 171, box 40, Georgia Department of Archives and History (hereafter cited as GDAH).

19. Kate M. McClellan to Flora Stuart, June 6, 1864, M. L. Fontaine to Flora Stuart, May 24, 1864, both in Stuart Family Papers; and see also J. J. Govan to Mrs. James L. Autry, January 30, 1863, James L. Autry Papers; Caroline S. Couper to Mrs. Habersham, May 12, 1863, in Habersham, A Sketch of Frederic, 194.

20. Kate M. Dabney to Flora Stuart, May 18, 1864, Stuart Family Papers. See also J. J. Govan to Mrs. James L. Autry, January 30, 1863, James L. Autry Papers; Mrs. Gilliam to Leila Habersham, n.d., quoted in Habersham, Sketch of Frederic, 201; E. Lewis to J. Stoddard Johnson, April 17, 1862, George M. Johnson Papers, Kentucky Histori- cal Society, Frankfort, Kentucky (hereafter cited as KHS); Jeb Pugh to Lisa Nicholls, attached to Mattie to Lisa Nicholls, July 28, 1862, Nicholls Family Papers, 1729–1965, Manuscript Collection 639, Louisiana Research Collection, Howard-Tilton Memorial Library, Tulane University, New Orleans (hereafter cited as Nicholls Family Papers).

21. Mary M. Fontaine to Flora Stuart, May 15, 1864, Stuart Family Papers. 22. Jeb Pugh to Lisa Nicholls, attached to Mattie to Lisa Nicholls, July 28, 1862,

Nicholls Family Papers. 23. Kate McClellan to Flora Stuart, June 6, 1864, Stuart Family Papers. See also

Hassie to Cousin Sallie, January 21, 1863, Richard W. Milner Collection, and Shell to My Dear Cousin, November 25, 1864, Lang Family Civil War Letters, box 9, microfilm drawer 252, both in GDAH.

24. Mrs. Sarah Bull to Flora Stuart, May 13, 1864, J. E. B. Stuart Papers 1833–1962, VHS.

25. Georgia Smith to Mrs. Stuart, May 24, 1864, Stuart Family Papers. 26. GMD to Flora Stuart, April 6, [1864 or 1865], Stuart Family Papers. 27. For more on sentimental writings modeling or shaping behavior and feelings for

groups of women, see Samuels, Culture of Sentiment. 28. Chesterfield’s Art of Letter Writing, 49. 29. Georgia Smith to Mrs. Stuart, May 24, 1864, Stuart Family Papers. 30. Shell to My Dear Cousin, November 25, 1864, Lang Family Civil War Letters. 31. Beckie Warren to Sister G. Spears, 6 December [1863 or 1864], Spears and

Hicks Family Papers #4622, SHC.

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32. Sister B. Warren, October 18, 1862, Spears and Hicks Family Papers. 33. Mary P. to Leila Habersham, May 15, [1863], in Habersham, Sketch of Frederic,

186. See also Mary P. Govan to Mrs. Jeanie V. Autry, April 25, 1863, James L. Autry Papers.

34. Kate M. McClellan to Flora Stuart, June 6, 1864, Stuart Family Papers. See also Sister in Law to Mrs. Emma L. Garnett, May 20, 1863, Emma Lavinia Baber Garnett Letters, 1847–1863, #27083, Library of Virginia, Richmond, Virginia; H. M. Bruce to Emily Todd Helm, September 30, 1863, Emilie Todd Helm Papers, KHS; and L.S.D. to Mrs. Johnson, June 18, 1862, George M. Johnson Papers.

35. Kate M. McClellan to Flora Stuart, June 6, 1864, Stuart Family Papers. See also J. J. Govan to Mrs. James L. Autry, January 30, 1863, James L. Autry Papers; Eliza to Sallie Milner, January 12, 1863, Richard W. Milner Collection; Mattie to Sister Lisa Nicholls, July 28, 1862, Nicholls Family Papers. See George C. Rable, God’s Almost Chosen People: A Religious History of the American Civil War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010), 76.

36. Psalm 146:9, KJV; Georgia Smith to Mrs. Stuart, May 24, 1864, Stuart Family Papers; Isaiah 54:5–8, KJV; Fanny Y. Craft to Mrs. Jeanie V. Autry, [1863], James L. Autry Papers. See also G. W. Dungan to Mrs. Lang, July 26, 1864, Lang Family Civil War Letters; E. Lewis to J. Stoddard Johnson, April 17, 1862, George M. Johnson Papers.

37. Jennifer Gross argues that widows symbolized the failure of the Confederate war effort and the postwar inability of white male survivors to care for the victims of war. These letters suggest that white southern communities took immediate action to keep widows woven into the fabric of society. See Jennifer Lynn Gross, “‘Good Angels’: Confederate Widowhood in the Reassurance of Patriarchy in the Postbellum South” (PhD diss., University of Georgia, 2001).

38. Ella M. Gammon to Flora Stuart, May 24, 1864, Stuart Family Papers. See also Kate M. McClellan to Flora Stuart, June 6, 1864, Stuart Family Papers; Mrs. Gilliam to Leila Habersham, n.d., quoted in Habersham, Sketch of Frederic, 201; Hassie to Cousin Sallie, January 21, 1863, Richard W. Milner Collection.

39. Ellen Coleman to Leila Habersham, n.d., in Habersham, Sketch of Frederic, 200. See also Hassie to Cousin Sallie, January 21, 1863, Richard W. Milner Collection; Jeb Pugh to Lisa Nicholls, in Mattie to Lisa Nicholls, July 28, 1862, , Nicholls Family Papers; Georgia Smith to Mrs. Stuart, May 24, 1864, Stuart Family Papers. For anal- ysis of Psalm 119, see F. Davidson, ed. The New Bible Commentary (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1960). Nearly two centuries earlier, Mary Rowlandson had used the same Psalm to prove that she emerged a stronger Christian from captivity. Mary White Rowlandson, The Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson (1682; repr., Champaign, Ill.: Project Gutenberg, 2009).

40. This idealized vision of heaven endured more culturally than theologically, appealing across denominations. See Rable, God’s Almost Chosen People, 177–78; Schantz, Awaiting the Heavenly Country, 38–69. See Ella M. Gimmon to Flora Stuart, May 24, 1864, and Mary M. Fontaine to Flora Stuart, May 15, 1864, both in Stuart Family Papers.

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41. Reverent J. T. Pickett to Mrs. M. A. Greer and Mrs. J. V. Autry, April 1, 1866, James L. Autry Papers. See also M. C. Lee to Hetty Pegram, 1865, Pegram-Johnson- McIntosh Family Papers, 1825–1941, VHS; Betty Warren to Sister Sallie, October 29, 1862, Spears and Hicks Family Papers.

42. Kate Dabney to Flora Stuart, May 18, 1864, Stuart Family Papers. See also Mary P. Govan to Mrs. Jeanie V. Autry, April 25, 1863, James L. Autry Papers; Mary Anne Harrison Fitzhugh to Alice Harrison, January 1, 1862, Harrison Family Papers, 1756–1893, VHS; M. L. Fontaine to Flora Stuart, May 24, 1864, Stuart Family Papers; Eliza to Sallie Milner, January 12, 1863, Richard W. Milner Collection. See Laderman, Sacred Remains, 57–62; and Schantz, Awaiting the Heavenly Country.

43. Kate M. McClellan to Flora Stuart, June 6, 1864, Stuart Family Papers. For sol- diers and civilians praising bravery in the name of the Confederacy, see John H. New to Hetty Pegram, February 12, 1865, Pegram-Johnson-McIntosh Family Papers, 1825– 1941, VHS; and Ella M. Gimmon to Flora Stuart, May 24, 1864, Stuart Family Papers.

44. Nannie O. Price to Mrs. Stuart, May 15, [1864], Stuart Family Papers. See also Matty Johnson to Mother, April 16, 1862, George M. Johnson Papers.

45. Ella M. Ginnan to Flora Stuart, May 24, 1864, Stuart Family Papers. 46. Ella M. Ginnan to Flora Stuart, May 24, 1864, Stuart Family Papers. 47. Georgia Smith to Mrs. Stuart, May 24, 1864, Stuart Family Papers. 48. Mary M. Fontaine to Cousin Flora, May 15, 1864, Stuart Family Papers; See also

Shell to My Dear Cousin, November 25, 1864, Lang Family Civil War Letters; Mattie to Sister Lisa Nichols, July 28, 1862, Nicholls Family Papers; and Ellen Coleman to Leila Habersham, quoted in Habersham, Sketch of Frederic, 200.

49. M. C. Lee to Hetty Pegram, 1865, Pegram-Johnson-McIntosh Family Papers. See also J. J. Govan to Mrs. James L. Autry, January 30, 1863, James L. Autry Papers; and Judge H. M. Bruce to Emily Todd Helm, September 22, 1863, Emilie Todd Helm Papers.

50. Cousin M. L. Fontaine to Mrs. Stuart, May 28, 1864, Stuart Family Papers. See also Shell to My Dear Cousin, November 25, 1864, Lang Family Civil War Letters.

51. Mattie to Lisa Nicholls, September 14, 1862, Nicholls Family Papers. 52. M P. G. to Mrs. Jeanie V. Autry, April 25, 1863, James L. Autry Papers. 53. Mrs. Sarah Bull to Flora Stuart, May 13, 1864, J. E. B. Stuart Papers; Georgia

Smith to Mrs. Stuart, May 24, 1864, Stuart Family Papers. 54. Faust, This Republic of Suffering, 14–24. 55. Soldiers bonded with their comrades, and doctors were rooted in both their

profession and their local communities. See Steven M. Stowe, Doctoring the South: Southern Physicians and Everyday Medicine in the Mid-Nineteenth Century (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004), and Shauna Devine, Learning from the Wounded: The Civil War and the Rise of American Medical Science (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2014).

56. For more on the significance of the body and death rituals, see Faust, This Republic of Suffering, 153–58; Laderman, Sacred Remains, 37, 73–74; and Nudelman, John Brown’s Body, 5–6, 44–45.

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57. For nurses or doctors, see Mrs. R. F. McGrouder to Mrs. Martin, June 30, 1862, Asa T. Martin Papers, Special Collections and Archives, Auburn University, Auburn, Alabama; G. W. Dungan to Mrs. Lang, July 26, 1864, Lang Family Civil War Letters. For soldiers, see John E. Beck to Mrs. Margaret Puckett, March 7, 1863, John E. Beck Letter, Louisiana and Lower Mississippi Valley Collections, Louisiana State University Libraries, Baton Rouge.

58. Mrs. Joseph L. McGrouder to Mrs. Martin, June 19, 1862, and Mrs. R. F. McGrouder to Mrs. Martin, June 30, 1862, both in Asa T. Martin Papers. See also Lt. Chas H. Keton to Sister, February 16, 22, March 5, 1863, and W. S. Fowler to Mrs. A. M. Holcomb, 19 March 1863, 5 April 1863, 19 April 1863, 29 April 1863, John Holcomb to Wife, April 7, 18, 1863, all in John M. Holcomb Papers, Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin (hereafter cited as UTA). For reply- ing, see Sgt. S. K. to Mrs. Thomas, October 7, 1864, W. G. Thomas Letters, 1863–1864, CSA Personal Narratives, box 65, microfilm drawer 57, GDAH. For seeking multiple sources, see Mollie to Sister Fannie, October 30, 1863, White-Hill Letters, Confederate Records, box 74, microfilm drawer 49, GDAH; John H. New to Hetty Pegram, February 12, 1865, Pegram-Johnson-McIntosh Family Papers.

59. See Faust, This Republic of Suffering, 14–30, for a detailed discussion on the use of condolence letters to reconstruct the antebellum ideal of a Good Death.

60. W. F. Aycock to Mrs. J. K. Calloway, December 5, 1863, Joshua K. Callaway Papers, UTA; B. B. Neal to Mrs. Nancy Gilliam, June 20, 1862, and, on disease, Son to Mrs. Nancy Gilliam, July 12, 1862, both in Nancy Gilliam Papers, 1850–1904, Alabama Department of Archives and History, Montgomery, Alabama (hereafter cited as ADAH); John E. Beck to Mrs. Margaret Puckett, March 7, 1863, John E. Beck Letter. For battlefield wounds, see J. C. Allen to Cousin Sallie, December 18, 1862, Richard W. Milner Collection.

61. Mollie to Sister Fannie, October 30, 1863, White-Hill Papers, GDAH; J. C. Allen to Cousin Sallie, December 18, 1862, Richard W. Milner Collection; John H. New to Hetty Pegram, February 12, 1865, Pegram-Johnson-McIntosh Family Papers.

62. J. F. Jaquess to Mrs. G. W. Johnson, April 13, 1862, George M. Johnson Papers. See also John Cowper Granbery to Alice Harrison, July 18, 1861, Harrison Family Papers.

63. Mrs. McGrouder to Mrs. Martin, August 23, 1862, Asa T. Martin Papers. 64. George Freaner to Mrs. E. W. Fontaine, October 6, 1864, George Freaner Letter,

1864, VHS. See also H. B. McClellan to Mrs. Stuart, October 10, 1864, Stuart Family Papers; J. F. Jaquess to Mrs. G. W. Johnson, April 13, 1862, George M. Johnson Papers; J. C. Allen to Cousin Sallie, December 18, 1862, Richard W. Milner Collection. For nurses giving care, see Ellie Reutch to Mrs. Clark, November 14, 1862, Thomas J. Clark Papers, State Archives of Florida, Tallahassee, Florida; Mrs. McGrouder to Mrs. Martin, August 23, 1862, Asa T. Martin Papers.

65. Mrs. Joseph L. McGrouder to Mrs. Martin, June 19, 1862, Asa T. Martin Papers. 66. W. F. Aycock to Mrs. J. K. Calloway, December 5, 1863, Joshua K. Callaway

Papers. Though J. E. B. Stuart did not die alone, he did choose to remain on the

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“i f h eart speaks not to h eart” 399

battlefield wounded. See H. B. McClellan to Mrs. Stuart, October 10, 1864, Stuart Family Papers.

67. W. F. Aycock to Mrs. J. K. Calloway, December 5, 1863, Joshua K. Callaway Papers. For letters reflecting Joshua’s religious beliefs, see J. K. Callaway to D. Callaway, May 24, 1862, and J. K. Callaway to Dulcinea, April 25, 1862, Joshua K. Callaway Papers.

68. Mrs. McGrouder to Mrs. Martin, August 23, 1862, Asa T. Martin Papers. See also Richard W. Milner Obituary, Baptist Banner, [January 1863], Richard W. Milner Collection.

69. For a sample of notification letters carrying last words and evidence of salva- tion, see Ellie Reutch to Mrs. Clark, November 14, 1862, Thomas J. Clark Papers; George Freaner to Mrs. E. W. Fontaine, George Freaner Letter; Sgt. S. K. to Mrs. Thomas, October 7, 1864, W. G. Thomas Letters; David Branson, March 18, 1865, in Washington Nance’s Diary, Washington Pickens Nance Civil War Papers, 1859–1865, ADAH.

70. J. F. Jaquess to Ann E. Johnson, May 29, 1862, George M. Johnson Papers. For other examples of a death described as peaceful or satisfactory, see J. C. Allen to Cousin Sallie, December 18, 1862, Richard W. Milner Collection; B. B. Neal to Mrs. Nancy Gilliam, June 20, 1862, Nancy Gilliam Papers; John H. New to Hetty Pegram, February 12, 1865, Pegram-Johnson-McIntosh Family Papers.

71. See also G. W. Dungan to Mrs. Lang, July 26, 1864, Lang Family Civil War Letters. For willingness to die, see Mollie to Sister Fannie, October 30, 1863, White- Hill Letters. For presentiment of death, see Albert to Cousin Caro, in Kate to Cousin Caro, January 21, 1866, Charles Augustus Lafayette Lamar Family Papers, 1830–1884, GDAH.

72. S. S. Jackson to Mrs. Geo W. Johnson, April 14, 1862, George M. Johnson Papers. 73. J. F. Jaquess to Mrs. G. W. Johnson, April 13, 1862, George M. Johnson Papers. 74. J. C. Allen to Cousin Sallie, December 18, 1862, Richard Milner Collection. 75. Richard W. Milner Obituary, Baptist Banner, [January 1863], Richard W.

Milner Collection. See also See Ellie Reutch to Mrs. Clark, November 14, 1862, Thomas J. Clark Papers; John E. Beck to Mrs. Margaret Puckett, March 7, 1863, John E. Beck Letter; R. F. McGrouder to Mrs. Martin, June 30, 1862, Asa T. Martin Papers; Son to Mrs. Nancy Gilliam, July 12, 1862, Nancy Gilliam Papers.

76. W. F. Aycock to Mrs. J. K. Calloway, December 5, 1863 Joshua K. Callaway Papers; See also John H. New to Hetty Pegram, February 12, 1865, Pegram-Johnson- McIntosh Family Papers.

77. B. B. Neal to Mrs. Nancy Gilliam, June 20, 1862, Nancy Gilliam Papers; W. F. Aycock to Mrs. J. K. Calloway, December 5, 1863, Joshua K. Callaway Papers; Mrs. McGrouder to Mrs. Martin, August 23, 1862, Asa T. Martin Papers; John C. Goodgame to Mrs. Mary Martin, n.d., Asa T. Martin Papers.

78. The list of items comes from J. C. Allen to Cousin Sallie, December 18, 1862, Richard W. Milner Collection. See also John E. Beck to Mrs. Margaret Puckett, March 7, 1863, John E. Beck Letter.

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400 journal of th e c ivi l war era, volume 7 , issue 3

79. W. F. Aycock to Mrs. J. K. Calloway, December 5, 1863, Joshua Callaway Papers; J. F. Jaquess to Mrs. G. W. Johnson, April 13, 1862, George M. Johnson Papers.

80. David Bransan, June 18, 1865, in Washington Nance’s Diary, Washington Pickens Nance Civil War Papers; W. F. Aycock to Mrs. J. K. Calloway, December 5, 1863, Joshua K. Callaway Papers; Fannie Dungan to Mrs. Lang, August 20, 1864, Lang Family Civil War Letters.

81. LaSalle Pickett gradually transitioned from mourning in private to a more public management of her husband’s memory. See Lesley J. Gordon, General George E. Pickett in Life and Legend (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998), 169–71.

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