Between Home and the Front

Civil War Letters of the Walters Family

Smithsonian National Postal Museum, Lynn Heidelbaugh, Thomas Paone, Thomas J. Paone

• Publisher: Indiana University Press
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9780253062994
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: American Civil War History
• Index: History

The personal letters of Americans during the Civil War preserve first-person records of news, people, and emotions that humanize the horrific events of the war and provide unique insights into the conflict's effects on individuals, families, communities, and America. Often, however, only the letters sent home survived, leaving half of the story missing. Between Home and the Front presents previously unpublished letters from the Walters family's collection held by the Smithsonian's National Postal Museum, which include the exchange of correspondence between the home front and front line, a perspective not often seen.

Between Home and the Front 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 record how she managed the household and a young child while becoming 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. 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.

Between Home and the Front offers not only unique first-person accounts from those that experienced the Civil War but also meticulous annotations that provide valuable historical context for the events, people, and material culture described in the letters.

ONE

INTRODUCTION

I now take up my pen to write you a few lines to let you know that I have not forgotten you.

—Rachel J. Ward to David W. Walters, July 28, 1859

RACHEL’S INVITATION TO DAVID

Eighteen-year-old Rachel J. Ward expressed her emotional attachment to a twenty-year-old man in the next county by writing to him in 1859, “I expected certain to see you last sunday and felt very much disappointed by not seeing youI feel very bad and do not expect to feel any better until I do see you.” David W. Walters of Cass County should have received Rachel’s invitation to a summertime picnic in Pulaski County in time to attend the social gathering set for two days after Rachel wrote the message. She left little doubt about her hopes—“I want to see you very much and cannot be satisfied without seeing you”—and she may have entrusted the note to be hand-delivered by a friend. Alternatively, she may have brought it to the post office, but no matching envelope postmarked with dates or locations is known to exist to provide evidence that it traveled through the mail. In fact, it may never be known if Rachel sent it or if David received it. However, the sentiments and paper remain, passed down by the descendants of Rachel and David, who eventually wed on December 16, 1860. Just four days after the couple married, the United States began to fracture when the state of South Carolina seceded. As events began to pull their nation apart, the Walterses relied on letters to fortify their marital and familial bonds during the American Civil War. The collection of their letters encompasses several people in the young couple’s social and emotional worlds and spans time from a moment in their courtship to the aftermath of the national conflict.

RACHEL J. WARD TO DAVID W. WALTERS

July the 28th 1859

Mooresburg Pulaski Co Ind

My dearest friend

I now take up my pen to write you a few lines to let you know that I have not forgotten youthe time seems long since I last saw youI expected certain to see you last sunday and felt very much disappointed by not seeing youI feel very bad and do not expect to feel any better until I do see you

we are going to have a picnic on next saturday which is the 30th of July and you are especialy infited¹ as many as can come and I shall be very happy to see you hereI am well at this time ex prest excepting a very bad coldI want to see you very much and cannot be satisfied without seeing you but I must come to a close as I have nothing to interesting to write and not much time eitherplease excuse all mistakes and write soon and let me know how you are so no more at present

from your most dear and affectionate friend

Rachel J Ward

to

David W Walters²

when this you see

remember me³

THEIR FAMILIES

Rachel (Ward) Walters and David Walters shared similar backgrounds. Both of their families came to northwestern Indiana from Ohio between the late 1830s and 1850s. They were part of successive waves of white settlers arriving after people of the Potawatomi nation were forcibly removed from land ceded to the United States in the 1832 Treaty of Tippecanoe.⁴ The families lived by Christian beliefs, worked farms, and sent their children to school, where they learned to read and write.

The Ward Family

Records for Rachel’s family in Indiana began with her father, Samuel Ward Jr., who made a homestead in Pulaski County in 1839. The 1883 publication Counties of White and Pulaski, Indiana named Samuel as one of the first “pioneers” who “came from Ohio, or some of the Eastern States, and commenced the construction of their new homes in the then wild and distant West.” There he purchased 160 acres in the newly established Harrison Township in 1841. He ran for office the same year and was active in the township, which was notable in the county’s history for being “solidly Republican on all State and National questions” between the 1840 and 1880 elections. Furthermore, he held a very public job as appointed postmaster of Mooresburg between 1853 and 1862.⁵

Along with the growth of his civic engagements, Samuel’s domestic responsibilities multiplied too. He married Sarah Ann Fallis, a fellow Ohioan whose family had also emigrated to Indiana. Sarah gave birth to their first child, Rachel, around 1842. Rachel grew up with four sisters and five brothers, and the siblings’ world became larger still when they went to school. Rudimentary education included lessons in reading and writing, and Rachel may have had further opportunities to develop penmanship and to study composition and etiquette for letters. A similar curriculum would have been taught at the school that David Walters attended while growing up in Fulton County, Ohio. The time available for studying and school, however, depended on demands for labor on the family farm.⁶ Moreover, Rachel and her eldest siblings would have witnessed, and possibly assisted with, their father’s postal duties. Post offices in a community the size of Mooresburg did not typically produce much profit but could bring in extra income while requiring relatively few hours to run the simple operations out of the postmaster’s residence or place of business.⁷ Samuel would have overseen the accounts, sorted the incoming and outgoing mail, and visited with the customers coming to buy stamps and pick up their letters and newspapers. News of the day could be overheard as the neighbors came and went on their errands at the post office, giving the Ward household an opportunity to engage in discourse outside their family.

The Walters Family

Like the Ward family, John and Hannah (McCarty) Walters had lived in Ohio. The couple, originally from Pennsylvania, had four boys and four girls between 1830 and 1850. Sometime after the 1850 census was taken, members of the Walters family relocated from Ohio to northern Indiana, perhaps motivated by opportunities to purchase farmland or work as agricultural laborers. The war further uprooted the family, and eventually the four Walters brothers—Eli, Isaac, David, and John Wesley—would leave Cass County, Indiana, to volunteer for the Union army.

The Walters brothers had each signed enlistment papers by August 1862. In contrast, the sons in the Ward family were too young for soldiering, but their father, Samuel Ward Jr., found at least one way to support the Union cause and served as an enrollment official for Pulaski County.⁸ Despite the state’s diverse political climate, the residents of Indiana showed fervor for the Union’s cause in the early months. Politicians and civic leaders gave impassioned speeches both in the Indiana State House and in communities throughout the state to encourage support for the Union and the war effort by enlisting in the military or providing for those who did.⁹ Indiana quickly met the federal government’s quota to raise six infantry regiments. In fact, by the end of 1861, Indiana had raised fifty regiments for service, or approximately fifty thousand men.¹⁰ The volunteerism that swayed the men who answered the call in 1861 and 1862 built the militaries of both the Union and Confederacy.¹¹

Patriotic sentiments and desire to serve echoed in several of David’s letters, and on September 29, 1862, he wrote to Rachel, “I feel that our contry needs my help & I am willing to do all that I can & eaven give my life for your libertys & our beloved childs.” In his very next letter to Rachel on October 1, 1862, David repeated the explanation of his motivation to volunteer, telling Rachel that he was sorry “that you ar put to so much trouble with our things but it cant be helped now & I feel that I am doing my duty in helping to maintain the laws of our country & put down this wicked rebellion.” Men who volunteered in the Union and Confederate armies exhibited similar ideas about honor and duty; moreover, regardless of social and economic factors, many believed they could not stay home while other men went off to fight.¹² Whatever the reason, each of the four Walters brothers found themselves committing to the Union army, and they, like other soldiers, faced competing priorities when reenlistment time came. In contrast to the early waves of patriotic-driven volunteerism, the soldiers who joined after the first waves were often swayed by financial incentives, such as signing bonuses known as bounties, or because they were drafted into the military after the government introduced conscription as the number of voluntary enlistments began to fail to meet the manpower needs of the armies depleted by years of warfare.¹³

Although Isaac Walters quickly joined the Union war effort, he did so without the moral and financial obligation of a dependent wife or family. By contrast, his brothers Eli and David were both married at the time they volunteered almost a year later. Married farmers grappled with how going off to war might put their families and farms at risk of economic ruin.¹⁴ James McPherson explained, “Married soldiers confronted a dilemma caused by competing ideals of manhood and honor. In one direction lay their responsibilities as husbands, fathers, and breadwinners for dependents to whom they had made a sacred pledge to cherish and support. In the other direction lay their duty as able-bodied citizens to defend their country. To evade either obligation would dishonor their manhood. But in time of extreme national peril, the manly call of duty to country seemed more urgent.”¹⁵ Such concerns affected the composition of regiments recruited in the area. As Thomas E. Rodgers pointed out, “Of the married men [in the west-central area of Indiana], only 25.5 percent served in the military at any time during the conflict, while 51.6 percent of the single males served. . . . Not only did relatively few married men serve, but many of those who did were at home for most of the war.”¹⁶ The fact that David served at all is quite remarkable given the demographics in his region of the state. The twenty-three-dollar bounty quoted in his letter of September 6, 1862, could have partly motivated his volunteering and brought solace that what he was to receive for signing up would help provide for his family. The burdens caused by David’s absence as a husband and father and competing obligations to family and nation featured throughout the Walterses’ wartime correspondence.

HOOSIERS AND THEIR RESPONSES TO THE WAR

Although the voluntary enlistment of the Walters brothers demonstrates how they supported the Union, similar commitment to the war effort cannot be attributed to all residents of Indiana or other states in the North. The election of 1860 saw Republican Oliver P. Morton, a vocal proponent of Abraham Lincoln and a strong supporter of the Union war effort, leading a politically divided state.¹⁷ The outbreak of the war briefly brought most of Indiana’s Republicans and Democrats together, as support for the common cause of preserving the Union had wide appeal across the political parties.¹⁸ By 1862, however, multiple crises throughout the natio...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Family Trees
• Maps
• Acknowledgments
• About the Letters
• 1. Introduction
• 2. 1861–1862
• 3. 1863
• 4. 1864
• 5. 1865 and the Postwar Years
• Epilogue
• Afterword
• Bibliography
• Index
• About the Authors