Double Duty in the Civil War: The Letters of Sailor and Soldier Edward W. Bacon

Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments AS USUAL, PEOPLE FROM ALL OVER THE UNITED STATES AND some from abroad helped, encouraged, corrected, and advised during this endeavor. Always it is refreshing and grand that total strangers will expend time and effort to assist in clarifying a Connecticut Yankee’s Civil War letters and diary. First I must thank Thomas Knoles, curator of manuscripts, and Susan M. Anderson, assistant curator, American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Massachusetts . They made available the complete Edward W. Bacon Papers, including photographs and Bacon’s hand-drawn map, from their collections. Without their cooperation, this work would not exist. Almost from the beginning, Sylvia Frank Rodrigue, Southern Illinois University Press executive editor, displayed a positive interest, offering encouragement and advice. Though always most professional and capable, she guides authors and editors with a warm sense of humor. Barb B. Martin, design and production manager at the same press, cheerfully provided valuable guidance on photograph, map, and art problems. I am very grateful to both for their unstinting aid. Curators, librarians, archivists, and their assistants readily searched for and furnished documents, photographs, and information. Repeatedly, the patient James W. Campbell and Amy L. Trout, curators at the New Haven Museum and Historical Society, fielded requests for odd or obscure facts about nineteenthcentury New Haven. The staff at the Connecticut Historical Society in Hartford also received many queries, and Barbara Austen, Jill Padelford, and Sharon V. Steinberg cheerfully responded. I thank them all. Yale University library staffers also handled many letters and e-mails asking for this and that from their collections and from the Bacon Family Papers, held in their libraries. Graciously helpful were Diane Kaplan, Cynthia Ostroff, and Laura Tatum. John T. Magill, curator and head of research services at the Historic New Orleans Collection, answered many questions about that city during the early Civil War years, questions ranging from the types of streetcar lines in the city to the location of various buildings. He invariably provided the answers. xi T. Juliette Arai and Brenda B. Kepley, Old Military and Civil Records at the National Archives, went out of their way to search the records on an obscure matter. Olga Tsapina and Lita Garcia researched manuscripts on another equally obscure subject at the Henry E. Huntington Library, San Marino, California. Michael J. Crawford, head of the Early History Branch, U.S. Naval Historical Center, surely tired of the many queries about Civil War ships, ratings, personnel , customs, and practices but kindly replied to all requests. His colleague, Robert A. Hanshew, photographic curator, was most generous in providing many ship images for selection. Much appreciated was the research undertaken by Megan G. Sheils and Sara Schoo of the Department of State’s Ralph J. Bunche Library in Washington, D.C. They confirmed the service of a nineteenth-century American consul, a matter that had defied my best efforts. Petitions for copies of manuscripts or photographs uniformly received quick attention from obliging people such as Cynthia Luckie, Alabama Department of Archives and History; Charles Greifenstein, American Philosophical Society; M’Lissa Kesterman, Cincinnati Historical Society; Diane Shelton and Lynne Hollingsworth, Kentucky Historical Society; and Dennis Northcott, Missouri Historical Society. Charlene Bonnette and Judy Smith, Louisiana State Library, assisted with a needed photograph, while Raynelda Calderon, the New York City Public Library ’s manuscripts and archives division, arranged to send a sailor’s lengthy Civil War journal. University library professionals often exerted themselves to satisfy pleas for documents. Among them were Dwayne Cox and John Varner at Auburn University ; Elizabeth B. Dunn at Duke; Peter X. Accardo at Harvard; Sue Presnell, Indiana University; Janet Bloom at the Clements Library, University of Michigan ; Graham Duncan, University of South Carolina; and Courtney Chartier, University of Texas, Austin. Many individuals also contributed to the completion of this work. Bob Huddleston of Northglenn, Colorado, supplied the answer to a nagging question about button arrangements on Civil War army uniforms. Hugh Davis, Ph.D., author of Leonard Bacon, generously replied to questions about the Bacon family. Professor Laurence Horn, Yale University, and his fellow members of the American Dialect Society, amazingly had the answers to puzzling nineteenthcentury idioms and deciphered an example of Bacon’s sometimes baffling hand script. Dave Neville, publisher of Military Images magazine, courteously assisted with the Medical Cadet program. Ethan Bishop, a contributor to the www. findagrave.com site, showed the way to finding a photograph. xii acknowledgments Lawrence T. Jones III, coauthor of Civil...