Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction by Marts A. Vinovskis
- 1 Have Social Historians Lost the Civil War? Some Preliminary Demographic Speculations
- 2 Community and War: The Civil War Experience of Two New Hampshire Towns
- 3 The Northern Soldier and His Community
- 4 Voluntarism in Wartime: Philadelphia's Great Central Fair
- 5 The Civil War and Municipal Government in Chicago
- 6 Who Joined the Grand Army? Three Case Studies in the Construction of Union Veteranhood, 1866–1900
- 7 “Such Is the Price We Pay”: American Widows and the Civil War Pension System
- Index
3 - The Northern Soldier and His Community
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 February 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction by Marts A. Vinovskis
- 1 Have Social Historians Lost the Civil War? Some Preliminary Demographic Speculations
- 2 Community and War: The Civil War Experience of Two New Hampshire Towns
- 3 The Northern Soldier and His Community
- 4 Voluntarism in Wartime: Philadelphia's Great Central Fair
- 5 The Civil War and Municipal Government in Chicago
- 6 Who Joined the Grand Army? Three Case Studies in the Construction of Union Veteranhood, 1866–1900
- 7 “Such Is the Price We Pay”: American Widows and the Civil War Pension System
- Index
Summary
In sorrow and in anger, Lt. George Kies wrote to his wife in Connecticut from Baltimore, where his company was stationed. “I received a letter from som one yesterday purporting to be from you but i cannot think that you would write me such a letter.” His wife scolded him for not writing to her, but he had sent her letters. His wife accused him of involvement with another woman with whom he supposedly had had clandestine rendezvous in Philadelphia. She thought he had spent the money they needed to buy gravestones for their dead children on furs for the other woman. These accusations were so detailed that Kies could only conclude somebody was deliberately telling lies to create trouble for him with his wife. “The one who says I hav is a liar and i would tell them so though [they] are as big as Christ himself.” Whoever it was, it upset Kies that his wife believed others instead of him. They had told her that he was telling women that his wife was dead and that he was not a married man. “You say that the soldiers say that i did not take your Death very hard. If you will tell me what soldiers told that i will let you know how hard they will take there [own] Death.” His wife's economic well-being worried him; he offered to send her all his pay and to steal for his own living.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Toward a Social History of the American Civil WarExploratory Essays, pp. 78 - 92Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1990
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