This essay describes the early life and wartime experiences of two soldiers, William Wheeler of New York and Charles C. Jones, Jr., of Georgia. We follow Wheeler's career as an artillery officer in Virginia, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and Georgia. Then we turn to Jones who, like Wheeler, went to Harvard Law School and, after serving briefly as mayor of Savannah, became an artillery officer. By observing their lives and thoughts we come to see the reasons why people on both sides believed they were fighting for a righteous cause.
FROM THE TEXT
The Civil War occupies a unique position in American history. No event, not even the Revolution, holds a higher place in the national regard. Its battles were the bloodiest ever fought on American soil, and its people were at once the most human and resourceful of our heroes. The names of its events and leaders read like a patriotic litany: Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, William Tecumseh Sherman, Thomas ("Stonewall") Jackson, Robert E. Lee; the Gettysburg Address and the Emancipation Proclamation; the Monitor and the Merrimack; and the Battles of Bull Run, Antietam, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, Vicksburg, and the Wilderness. The history of the war includes stories of recruitment, war industries, supplies, military leadership, politics, diplomacy, and civilian morale. It is really not one tale but many separate histories, each complex and elusive.
The Civil War can, however, be reduced to human scale by the very soldiers who fought in it. Each had his own history, personal experiences that reflected in some fashion the larger forces of the war. Although most soldiers left no record of their thoughts and activities beyond the brief notice they received in troop lists, casualty reports, and other public records, some wrote diaries and letters that allow us to observe closely their personal histories. Two such men were William Wheeler, captain of New York's Thirteenth Artillery and Charles Colcock Jones Jr., lieutenant colonel of the Georgia Artillery. Their Civil War letters help explain why northerners and southerners took arms against one another and describe how they spent their days during the hard years of the war.