The Civil War Letters of Abner C. Smith

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Letters Written by Union soldier Abner C. Smith to His Family in East Haddam, Connecticut, 1862-1865. Transcribed and Annotated.

One by one, his wife saved his letters, until, at the end of two-and-a-half years, there were 113. His children saved them and began the passing of the letters to the next generations, who lovingly preserved them. Now they are in book form, transcribed and annotated.

Abner C. Smith's letters tell the story of the Civil War in the voice on an ordinary Union soldier who tries with all his might to raise his children and support his wife through the written word only. Hope, patriotism, faith, courage, humor, and love weave together with his worries about the cow, the wood, the crops, the finances, the health of his children, the education of his children, the laziness of his children, and how to be sure his one daughter, the teenaged Georgiana, would be "a good girl."

As part of the 20th Regiment of the Connecticut Volunteers, his letters come from New Haven, Washington D.C., Virginia, Gettysburg, Alabama, Tennessee, "somewhere is the woods of Georgia" while on Sherman's March to Sea, Savannah, and from a "Hospital near Goldsboro, North Carolina."

(The companion book, Georgiana, Like So Many, is the story of Abner C. Smith's daughter.)