A Punishment on the Nation: An Iowa Soldier Endures the Civil War ed. by Brian Craig Miller (review)

Brian Craig Miller’s edited collection of Silas W. Haven’s Civil War letters offers a penetrating view of this soldier’s daily routine as a private in the Twenty-seventh Iowa Infantry. Mustered into service in early August 1862, Haven—an unwavering abolitionist who supported Lincoln throughout the war—was briefly stationed in Minnesota before spending the bulk of the war in Tennessee, Arkansas, Missouri, Louisiana, and Alabama. A Punishment on the Nation consists mainly of Haven’s letters to his wife Sarah “Jane” Haven, though there are letters to his young children, as well as a few letters to Haven from Jane and his parents. With the original letters being privately held, Miller’s efforts to bring to light this Iowan’s Civil War experiences fills a gap in the history of the Twenty-seventh Iowa Infantry’s wartime duties. The variety of topics addressed in the letters should hold the interests of a wide range of audiences. In addition to Haven chronicling his daily routines and the Twenty-seventh’s limited military engagements, Haven devotes significant space to religion, as well as his views on abolition and race relations, the Copperhead movement, guerrilla warfare, financial issues, and medical maladies. There is also ample material concerning the Iowa homefront.

By the time of his enlistment, Haven was thirty-six years old, a husband and father of three who had spent his prewar years as a carpenter and farmer in the small community of Rockford, Iowa. In 1858, Haven was a founding member of the First Baptist Church of Rockford, and his deeply personal religious outlook shaped his views on his own enlistment, slavery, and the war in general. In early spring 1863 Silas reiterated to Jane that this “War is a punishment (I think) that God inflicts on a nation for national sins” (45–46). Haven made clear to Jane and others that slavery’s existence in America had caused this reckoning. As a soldier, Haven’s view on slavery and race relations were in line with many anti-slavery northerners who separated their support for abolition while still considering blacks to be unequal to whites. Haven abhorred slavery and supported the enlistment of black soldiers, even to the point of stating that “Negro regiments [learn] pretty fast” and that they “make first-rate soldiers” (74–75, 87–88). At the same time, Haven indicated to Jane that he did not consider blacks to be equal to whites and preferred to not live among them. As Haven fought to defeat the Confederacy and atone for these “national sins,” he assuaged Jane’s fear for his safety by reminding her that “we must wait patiently for we are in the hands of a just and merciful God and he doeth all things well. I feel that he has been with me and watched and protected me ever since I came into the army and my trust is in him” (39).

For Silas W. Haven—like all Union and Confederate soldiers who served—knew not what lay before him as a soldier. Ultimately, this midwesterner did not actively participate in major battles, though the Twenty-seventh Iowa Infantry was involved in the Red River Campaign and the taking of Mobile toward the end of the war. Instead, Haven spent a large portion of the war either being detailed to guard duty or being excused from such duties as a result of constant battles with diarrhea and other illnesses. With time at his disposal, Haven wrote. By all accounts, the Havens appeared to have a devoted and loving marriage. Silas displayed a keen interest in Jane’s and their children’s wellbeing, especially when there was sickness in the family. Aside from reminding his wife to trust in Providence that the Union would win and that they would see each other again, numerous letters also concerned...