News---11th Mississippi Soldier's Letters Discovered, Donated and Digitized

Letters From the Civil War Donated to Ole Miss, Lucy Weber, May 6, 2013, Clarion Ledger

Richard Bridges seemed like a typical college kid in his letters home: He tells his family he may need more money and definitely more clothes, talks about hanging out with old friends from home and sounds a little homesick at times. Through his letters, this one-time University of Mississippi student has returned to the Oxford campus 150 years later.

Mike Martin of Madison, his sister Pat Owen of Rankin County and two of their cousins in Memphis — Bridges’ great-great nephews and nieces — recently donated to the university the 27 letters that Bridges wrote when he served in the University Greys, the unit organized by students to fight in the Civil War.  “We found out that it was significant in that these were only the second set of letters from one of the original 130 University Grays to ever find their way back to the university,” Martin said. “They were proud to receive them and we were proud to give them.”

The letters are housed in the university’s special collections and can be read online. Some of the letters are on display in a special exhibit that opened recently, “Preserving Our Past: Highlights from Archives & Special Collections.” “These letters are indeed one of our treasures,” said Jennifer Ford, head of archives and special collections at Ole Miss. “The Bridges’ letters are a significant addition to our collection.”

Martin said the letters were handed down to his mother in the 1960s from his great aunt, Dot Batton who lived in Crystal Springs where Bridges lived. “I remember Aunt Dot mentioned Uncle Richard and then she pulled out this tin box. She told her (Martin’s mother), “Martha, I want you to have these,” Martin said. “Mama went home and transcribed all those letters. We knew they were special.”
Through the years, the letters were tucked away for safekeeping. After Martin’s mother died, the letters ended up in Owen’s possession. “We talked about how to keep them safe,” Martin said.

Eventually, the family decided to contact officials at the university to see if they wanted them. “The letters needed to be back where he was,” Martin said. “I really thought this was no big deal, that they get stuff like this all the time, but in fact this is only the second set of original letters,” he said.
Written in the graceful penmanship of the day, Bridges’ letters tell of his life from 1861 to 1863. He writes of camp life, asks for more pants and blankets, asks for money when he hasn’t received his military pay, tells briefly of battles and reports on his health, including not-so-serious and serious wounds. There’s longing for home when he writes: “Wealth, honor and ease are but poor things to compare with the pleasure that it would afford me just to see you all once more.”

In the first letter, written Jan. 26, 1861, before he enlisted in his freshman year, he tells one of his sisters that he’s well despite a great deal of sickness, pneumonia and diptheria, in the college and how much he enjoyed the recent holidays at home. The last letter from Bridges is one he dictated on May 26, 1861 “thro’ the kindness of a Va. lady” following the amputation of his left leg after he was struck by a minnie ball during the Battle of the Wilderness.

The last letter in the collection, dated June 3, 1864, came from the woman who wrote the previous letter, Louisa A. Smith of Staunton, Va., telling the family that Bridges passed away peacefully the day before. Smith also enclosed one of his shirt buttons and a lock of Bridges’ hair, which the family kept with the letters through the years. Reading through the letters chronologically shows how Bridges changed over the course of his service that included seeing action in battles at Manassas, Ball’s Bluff, the Seven Days Campaign, and Gettysburg, Martin said.

“In the first letters, he was a peaceful sort of guy. Then, his attitude changed to not bloodthirsty but that he didn’t want to lose,” Martin said. “The guy’s been dead 150 years, and I still get emotional.”
After deciding to donate the letters to the university, Martin said the family delved into Civil War history, trying to learn more about Bridges. They found a picture of him — “he’s a good looking guy” — in a book detailing the history of the 11th Mississippi Infantry Regiment, which included the University Greys in Company A, Martin said.

In the book, Bridges is listed on the Confederate government’s Roll of Honor, dated May 5, 1864. “He was included after that last injury so I think he was considered particularly brave,” Martin said.
The special exhibit “Preserving Our Past” will be on display until January 2014 on the third floor of the J.D. Williams Library on campus. Besides select Bridges’ letters, the exhibit includes special pieces from the archives’ blues collection, including rare 78s of bluesman Robert Johnson, signed baseballs by Ty Cobb and Ted Williams and several pieces from literary collections.

Text and Image Source: The Clarion Ledger

CWL----The Last Letter Home: On Campaign, On The Battlefield, In The Hospital, In Prison

Proud To Say I Am A Union Soldier: The Last Letters Home From Federal Soldiers Written During the Civil War, 1861-1965, Franklin R. Crawford, Heritage Books, 238pp., , 20+ photographs, notes, bibliography, index, $29.95.

Crawford has done good service to Federals who died during the war. Similar in many ways to a portion of Greg Coco's work focusing on Gettysburg, Crawford organizes and edits the letters home of 31 Federal soldiers. He is a careful researcher who offers between 15 and 40 notes for each of the individuals. Crawford's comments are not overwrought with Victorian pathos but are clear and concise summaries of the soldiers journeys, camplife and encounters on the battlefield.

Private Pliny F. White, Company E. 14th Vermont encounters drills, picket duty, drills, weapon care, drills after he enlists in early September 1862. With other Vermont regiments that enlisted during the early fall of 1862, the 14th travel to Washington D.C. to man the forts. White frets that his term of service will expire and no combat will be seen. Fortunately Confederate raider Mosby strays to close to Washington DC and two Vermont brigades are ordered out of the forts. Marching from northern Virginia, through Maryland, the Vermonters arrive in Gettysburg on July 2. He writes on July 2 to his sister, "The chances are that today we shall go into battle." Pliny must wait 24 hours for that to happen. Wounded severely in the arm, Pliny is sent on July 5 to the Seminary Hospital. His last letter is July 31. One other letter follows. Francis Bell writes to White's family that Pliny died at 10pm on August 5 due to fever and diahrea (sic).

Ernst Damkoehler,a veteran of the Prussian army and private in Company I, 26th Wisconsin, has commissary duties which bores him but does allow him to sell his free time as a horse groom. Safe during the 1862 and 1863 campaigns of the Army of the Potomac due to his rear eschelon duties. The Eleventh Corps in which Ernst serves is transferred to Chattanooga and participates in the breakout. Stripping the commissary to the barest essentials, Sherman orders commissary soldiers to be transferred to the front in the Atlanta campaign. His last letter home is April 17 1864. He is wounded and captured at Resaca, sent to Andersonville Prison. He dies in June 1864 from complications of the wound and diarrhea. Twelve graves in Anderson hold men of the 26th Wisconsin.

Crawford sets forth soldiers' remarks with a simplicity and directness that is sobering. Each soldier's story takes about 20 minutes to read. The impact of reading the soldiers' description of the ordinariness of their camps, their marches, their cooking, their drills helps the reader to understand these were ordinary men. Loving and missing terribly their families contrasts with the aloneness of being one dying soldier in the Seminary Hospital that held over 700 or being one of the fifty a day who died at Andersonville.

Readers who are reenactors or those who wish to recall to memory the lives of Civil War soldiers will enjoy this book. Also, those editing family letters would do well to look to this book as a model of a difficult task well done.

News---Historian Sentenced For Stealing Lincoln Letter

Historian Sentenced For Stealing Lincoln Letter, reporting by Edith Honan; editing by Michelle Nichols and Xavier Briand, Reuters News Service, Sep 19, 2008.

A U.S. historian who pleaded guilty to stealing letters written by former Presidents George Washington and Abraham Lincoln was sentenced to 18 months in prison on Friday. Edward Renehan, 52, pleaded guilty in May to one count of interstate transportation of stolen property and admitted stealing a March 1, 1840, letter by Lincoln and two letters dated August 9, 1791, and December 29, 1778, by Washington.

The letters, part of the personal collection of former U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt, were taken from the Theodore Roosevelt Association. Renehan had been the acting director of the New York-based historical and cultural group. Renehan later sold the letters to a New York gallery for $97,000, the U.S. Attorney's Office in Manhattan said.

Jim Bruns, head of the Roosevelt association, attended the sentencing at Manhattan federal court. He told reporters the letters were "not significant to the shaping of America," but were treasured by Roosevelt, who displayed them in his library. In sentencing Renehan, who faced a maximum of 10 years in prison, U.S. District Judge Denny Chin called the case "baffling."

"By all accounts, Mr. Renehan is a pre-eminent historian and biographer, and yet he engaged in this stealing," said Chin. "It's really hard to understand. I'm not sure that I've heard a convincing explanation." Renehan, who has written six books including one on the Kennedys, said he has suffered from bipolar disorder, which at the time of the thefts, from 2005 to 2006, was undiagnosed. "At the time that I took those letters... I was on an extended manic episode," an emotional Renehan said in his plea for leniency. He was ordered to report to prison by January 2.

Text Source: Thomson Reuters 2008.

And From the May 21, 2008 New York Post:

Ill Served: Edward Renehan Says Bipolar Disorder Led Him To Steal Historic Letters By Lincoln And Washington, Kati Cornell, New York Post, May 21, 2008

A sticky-fingered historian has 'fessed up to lifting two prized letters by George Washington and another by Abraham Lincoln and selling them for nearly $100,000. Edward Renehan, former director of the Theodore Roosevelt Association in Oyster Bay, LI, is facing 24 to 30 months in federal prison after pleading guilty yesterday to transporting stolen goods across state lines.

The letters by Washington, dated 1778 and 1791, and Honest Abe, written in 1840, sold for $97,000 at a Manhattan gallery, according to court papers. The Lincoln letter was handwritten and signed more than 20 years before he became president. The Washington documents just carried his signature. While the contents of the letters have only minor historic significance to the presidents, they are rare and valuable, defense attorney Peter Brill said. Renehan, who has written six books, is also facing state charges in Nassau County for stealing a fourth letter from the association he once headed - this one by Roosevelt.

In it, the 26th president, who kept a vacation home in Oyster Bay, discusses the death of his youngest son, Quentin, in 1918 during World War I. Brill said Renehan, 51, left his post as director of the association last year, before the thefts came to light, after he learned he had been suffering from a previously undiagnosed bipolar disorder. "This was a single aberrant act in an otherwise pretty impressive life," said Brill, adding that Renehan is a "very successful author" and had no pressing need for cash.

"He takes full responsibility," Brill said. "It's just that in that state maybe you do things you wouldn't do if you were thinking clearly." Renehan is due in court on the state case on June 13 and faces a maximum sentence of seven years behind bars. "I suspect we'll try to work out a disposition that will cover everything," Brill said.

The historian was arrested before he could sell the Roosevelt letter, which has been returned to the association. Renehan is well known in history circles, having penned books on Cornelius Vanderbilt and the Kennedy clan. He says on his online MySpace page that "biography" is his first love and that he is devoted to "green" politics and folk music, even claiming to have once sung with Pete Seeger. He admits to having bipolar disorder and says, "I continue to pick the shattered pieces from one of my last great expended hypomanias."

Text Source: New York Post
Photo Source: New York Post