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4 GOING OFF TO WAR GOOD-BYE TO FAMILY AND FRIENDS In 1861, recruits did not expect to be away from home for long when they joined their companies, but they still prepared in some way to enter into their new way of life. Husbands bade farewell to wives and children, giving them instructions for conducting home life and business while they were gone. Young men listened to words of wisdom given by concerned parents and took leave of family, friends, and sweethearts. No doubt there were many boys who married their beloveds before they left for the war, as did the Illinois private “who thought best to take to himself a wife.”1 But prudent individuals such as East Tennessee Confederate Daniel Miller disappointed their fiancées by postponing their nuptials for more propitious times.2 Early in the war, young men left home excited about their new adventure, with little worries about long separations, mutilation, or death. But the more thoughtful among them probably had to adjust to the unsettling feelings that accompanied leaving loved ones. Louisianan William Henry King noted in his diary that he wept when parting with his wife and children. “I shall ever remember the scene,” he recorded, “for I then felt what I shall never be able to express in words.”3 Wisconsinite John Henry Otto, a German immigrant, recalled the melancholy of the men in his company as they set out for war. “One could not help but to put the question to himself,” he wrote, “Will I ever see this place and home again?” On the train he roused the company, driving away the blues with a German war song.4 But even when men left home with what appeared to be light hearts, they might very well have been doing their best to “dispel sad feelings,” as some Louisiana recruits did with their “gayety .” “We sought to drown trouble in mirth,” one of them recalled.5 Men made peace with family members as they prepared to go to war, not wishing to leave behind any hard feelings, or at least tried to explain their actions to concerned relatives. Sons tried to reassure parents by making it clear that enlistment was not an impulsive act. Confederate soldier David Pierson apologized to his father for “leaving so suddenly” but informed him that he did so “after a calm and thoughtful deliberation .”6 And 18-year-old Frank Rieley of Ohio, who had run away from home, leaving 78 THE CIVIL WAR his parents worried and searching for him in local Cleveland encampments, alerted his family to his whereabouts. Not exactly apologizing, but still feeling an explanation was in order, he wrote to them from Camp Worcester, at Monroeville, Ohio, informing them that he had no regrets about his decision to enlist. It was his duty, he explained, and one that surpassed his obligations to them.7 Once committed to go to war, men busied themselves, as one Louisianan recorded, making “the necessary preparations for the exchange of home comforts for the trials and tribulations” of a soldier.8 They arranged their affairs, collected their essential items, and prepared themselves psychologically for their new lives. New Yorker Henry Graham spent time preparing to leave for the army by rereading letters from a soldier friend, which gave him an idea of what to expect in camp life, and by packing his personal gear, including his checkers and chess men, “so that we shall not be wholly destitute of rational amusement.”9 Kentucky Unionist Marcus Woodcock planned on packing something more lethal. After he enlisted he immediately ordered a Bowie knife “without which a soldier’s equipment was then considered very imperfect,” a large piece of steel favored by many a new Southern-born soldier. Woodcock also devoted time to less bloodthirsty concerns, as did so many other young men. He wrote letters and tended to personal business. “I was in a continued whirl of excitement during the whole evening,” he noted. He returned to his company the next morning to the sound of friends urging him to be careful.10 Some young men exhibited their naïve perceptions of war-making by the things they thought to carry with them. Mississippian David Holt bemusedly recalled the long list of items, including a Bible and a volume of Shakespeare, he “absolutely toted” to Virginia.11 Arkansan William E. Bevens recalled that he and his fellow recruits expected to “take our trunks and dress suits.” His...

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