utopia on the (1861) homefront
From the Richmond Daily Dispatch February 27, 1863:
A solemn warning to wives.
–A correspondent of the Selma Reporter relates a story which should serve as a solemn warning to the wives of soldiers. He says a few weeks ago a soldier was tried and convicted of the crime of desertion, and sentenced to be shot. The day for the execution arrived, and at the appointed hour this brave man, who had fought many battles and endured every kind of hardship, fell a bloody corpse at the hands of his comrades. Upon inquiry it was ascertained he was as true as steel to our cause, and that it was on account of his wife that he deserted. He received a letter from her full of complaints. Looking alone upon the dark side of the picture, she had magnified her troubles and sufferings, and earnestly entreated her husband to return home. He became restless, discontented, unhappy. He ceased to make any interest in the discharge of his military duties, and thought only of how he could get home. His solemn oath never to desert troubled him much, and he well knew the crime of desertion had become so frequent in the army it would be punished with death. In this state of perplexity he drew his wife’s letter from his bosom and read it again, and, shutting his eyes to the consequences, in deserted? [he deserted,?] and for this crime he suffered a bloody and ignominious death. His wife, now a widow, know[s] no peace of mind, but is constantly haunted with the thought that her exaggerated representations of her trials and sufferings caused her husband’s death. Let this case be a lesson to all wives and mothers. When you write to the soldier speak words of encouragement; cheer their hearts; fire their souls, and arouse their patriotism. Say nothing that will embitter their thoughts, or swerve them from the path of patriotic duty.
You can read a good overview of Civil War desertion at etymonline.com:
“Perhaps the most important reasons for Confederate desertion was the tug of home,” [Reid] Mitchell writes [in The Vacant Chair]. There’s an important study by Drew Gilpin Faust about Confederate women, that concludes the war was lost when they finally decided the men were needed at home more than independence was needed. Sickness, malnutrition, and invading Yankee armies closed in on the South, and the women called the men home.
what am I fighting for?
