I gave a presentation on those at poets in the parlor series. And thenl they actually ended up down stairs in theaterium for several months, hung up as two posterboards. And i have read so many letters that i could not find that book at the beginning that id been looking for. I thought maybe theres a need there. Maybe i should start working on that. So, i read more and finally put in a book proposal. And finally got the book. And how long did you spend diving into these letters . I dont know. Ive read at least a few thousand. I dont know how many hours. I started in 2013 reading. And up to 18, 2019, i am still coming across one of the things that struck me about how you developed this book is the organization of it. Can you talk about how you decided to organize these letters. The truth of the matter is the content was determined by the soldiers and not so much by me. So, when i started the reading process, i remember i think it was debbie ham, who was in manuscripts and she brought me the first collection and said to me so what are you looking for in the collections . And i this is going to sound like a Flipping Answer but it was the truth. I said well, i dont really know what im looking for, nor do i know that ill recognize it when i see it. I just started writing down things. And as i kept going through letters and letters, things started to coalesce. There were certain topics they wrote about. And some of those turned into sections. And those sections turned into chapters. So, the chapters are schematic. But it was the soldiers who basically told me what the content was going to be. So, i chose what i thought were good examples of various things, whether that be them doing duty, sickness, and trying to maintain health. Whether that was combat, whether that was trying to manage affairs from afar. Home life, that kind of thing. They all coaless that way. When we started talking about how we wanted to do this, you were gracious enough to say why dont you pick things that move you. So a lot of the things he im going to ask about are things i found compelling when i went through here. And the next one. This is private Thomas Seacord and heres the cover of the book, by the way. Oh, yeah, yeah. Thomas seacord, he was he was active in some of the mississippi campaigns and so on. He started his writing his letters actually from he definitely wrote letters home to his spouse from camp defiance, which is where caro is. And i know one of the invaluable parts of your book is, as an append, you have a short narrative of all the people youre highlighting in their letters. Theres 165 different people i took from and so i have a short biography for each one of those. Why did i find Thomas Seacord so compelling . This is the text. But if we could zoom in on that toext. And you can read it. Sometimes its a little difficult. Butted Heres Part of the text i really found moving. Grrs i will write as often as you will. Your letters are worth more to me than gold. And i thought that summed up the whole project. It very much does. Let me give you a similar but counter quotation, which is on the next page in the book. And this is someone writing in may 1865, and he writes i often noticed my companions, how tired and fatigued they would look after a long day march. Some of them would almost seem as though life itself was a burden to them. But oh, what a change has come over their count innocence, a change from sorrow to joy . What has caused it . Theres a been a great victory or has peace been declared . No. The mail has come into camp and they have received letters from their loved ones at home. Yes, that accounts for it. For the time being all their hardships and suffering are forgotten all through the medicine of a letter. As an oral historian, ive interviewed hundreds of veterans. Obviously not from the civil war. And thats a constant thing. The communication from home, whether its letters, phone calls, emails and texts today, it is so important to these soldiers. Back then letters, for them, were the next best thing to being there. Today maybe its Zoom Or Facebook live. But back then it was definitely letters. And this next slide, i want to go to one of the biggest challenges you had to face because the educational level of the soldiers at that time and their writing skills wasnt quite up to what we would observation pect today. So, the question is how did you sort through all of this and figure out what they were actually trying to say . So, when i went to start looking at the letter collections, in the back of my mind, i was hoping there would be transscriptions, so i could just follow the transcriptions. But those were very rare. And in retrospect, i learned not to trust any previous transcriptions by others. I got very adept at reading them and finding mistakes and so on. I realized if you want it done right, you have to do it yourself. And on day one, if you cant read cursive writing, game over. You have to be able to read cursive writing. Do you think they should teach cursive writing in School Today . Im not saying that. But maybe if youre going into history and going to read old documents or letters, even from World War ii and the korean war, youre going to need to read cursive writing. I found theres not much in the way of punctuation. So, youve circled the only three places where theres any kind of punctuation on the letter. And there are some people that wrote during the time that used punctuation pretty much the way we did. But that was the exception rather than the rule. And ive come to learn that part of the reason for this is theyre writing, many times, as if they are speaking to someone. So, if youre speaking to someone, you do not say. I am fine, period. How are you . You live that punctuation off. Plus, theyre writing to loved ones, other family members, relatives, close friends who know what their voice sounds like, whats their inflections are, what their accent is like and so on. So, punctuation is almost supfrilous in that regard. So, you have to get in their head as you read various soldiers letters. You almost get a sense of how they spoke. Do you get a sense of educational level most of these soldiers had . So, in the 1870, national desennial sensess is the first time they asked about literary. So, for illinois, it was just about 90 . So, if you want to back track to five or ten years earlier, its got to be at least 80 or 85 were literate. As you read the letters, you find that there is a gambit of literacy. That is, some people write phonetically. And soldiers is spelled solger is. So, if they have misspellings or lack of punctuation, thats in there. When i feel it gets too difficult, in brackets, ill put in a little help. On what i think that word is you might not quite recognize. But that is part of the reading experience. Although, in the book, i save you having to read cursive writing. Well, the thing that strikes me about the time period and we can be critical about how poorly they spelled, things like that. The united states, in my understanding is far exceeded any other country in the world at this time for literacy. That could be true. That could be true. And i think most of them could or they had fellow soldiers in their Tent Or Company that could write for them. They still wanted to communicate with home. People who were wounded, they could get somebody from the sanitary commission or other people who would write letters for them to home. Theres a chapter called lifeline of letters. And thats what these letters were for them. Not only did they want to write letters but they were desperate, as we read before, to receive them as well. Lets go to the next slide. Im calling this seeing the elephant, which you know, and most civil war historians and know the war, that means youve seen combat. Tell us about captain david norton. Hes writing to Mary Chapman. This is an interesting story because they had not met. And Captain Norton, from a fellow officer, got a dare. I dare you to write to this lady named Mary Chapman whoorjs he called molly, back home. And so, Captain Norton used that slim introduction to write an initial letter to her to get a correspondence going. And as you go through the correspondence, which is another collection here in the Abraham Lincoln President ial library, you can tell theyre building up this intimacy. They exchange pictures. They talk about a little bit what life at home might be if they got together. And so on and so on. So, he is making a mighty effort to impress her through his letters. And when we were talking about this, the thing that impressed me was weve got this excerpt from this letter that, as you said goes on and on and on. This is a lengthy letter. You can tell hes trying to make a good impression. But he was an officer who was an aid to a general. And so, he had perspectives that a lot of other soldiers on the ground might not have had. This particular engagement at missionary ridge, which was part of the chattanooga campaign. And one of the reasons i found so compelling about the particular excerpt is because it was about missionary ridge, which is my favorite moment of the civil war. Okay. I think, as you listen to the clip, youll understand why. Orders were given for our lines to move up nearer to the rebels and for our squirmishers to drive rebels into their long lines of intrenchments at the foot of missionary ridge. It was gallantly done and the division of 14th core, ours, were ordered to create a diversion in favor of hooker, who could be heard opening his part of the gain. Gallantly the nobleman charged across the open field, amidst a perfect storm of shots and shells. They have taken the intrenchments. They were ordered to stop but no, the balls are flying too thick. They could not stop and live and absolutely, without orders, they charged on up the hill. A thrill of anguish passed through every frame. Their loss, cries general grant. Send the whole car after them. But long before the order could be carried at the anxious troops a shot that shook the earth went up and forward they rushed on what seemed to be an inevitable destruction. Onward and upward went the soldiers. Oh, how beautiful those starry flags looked as they floated up that steep Mountain Side covered with brisling bay nets and canon. Do they pause to await the arrival of their slower comrades . No. Every man pushes forward into the mouths of the fierce canon and with a slay, capture or drive away the rebel artilleriests. The enemy, dumb founded, fly and our victorious boys start down the hill after them. The victory, the most glorious of the war, is ours. And i would kind of agree with him, maybe the most glorious. It was extremely rare you have an assault like this against an intrenched enemy on the top of a hill and that was successful. I need to add a counterpoint. This kind of description of combat or major battle is extremely rare and that is one of the reasons why i happen to include this. More often when a soldier was in a battle and they wrote home about it, unless it was the first battle, when it was a novelty to them and they might describe different things could happen. So their parents or spouse knows a little of whaurtsz whats going on, their description of a battle will be for example, well take missionary ridge. We fought a great battle at missionary ridge. Im okay or not okay. So and so that you know is doing fine or was wounded. But you can read all about the particulars in the newspapers. Because theyll probably know more about it than i do and thats it. Again, part of the Lifeline Kind of thing. I know you read about the battle and you know our regiment was there. Thats what they wanted to convey, not a description of what the combat was like. You mentioned the captain was on a general staff. His perspective is maybe the 10 or 20 guys he can see around him. Thats true. This next one, i dont know if you want to mention second Lieutenant Payson Shumway before i read it to the audience . No. Go ahead. This is written from a camp near jackson, mississippi. Yes. In july 19th, 1863. And the significant part of that is this would have been right after the surrender of bixburg, mississippi. Thats right. Just after dark, one of our boys sat down to a Piano And Home and played home sweet home. Of course that soon brought the boys who were not on post together. Before the song was half through, i could see, by the light of the burning town, and cotton, that the silent tears stood in many an eye which, of late, had been all unused to weep. A very poignant moment and it reminds me of christian Mcwhorters Book and the battle of civil war in music. Here is somebody playing on a piano for some bizarre reason is in intrenchments or on the ramparts somewhere. It turns out that, prior to the Union Capturing that, that there was somebody named private Douglas Carter of texas who played on the same piano before he was captured during the siege. And that same piano still exists. He was able to get that. That is, this private Douglas Carter of texas. And the piano resides in the confederate memorial Hall Museum in new orleans. And when i found this on somebodys website, they didnt know the Union Side of it. They knew about the confederate part. So, i was able to make the connection. And your comments illustrated anather thing. The narration you use to tie all these things together and give background and context, i think, is invaluable and help people enjoy this that much more. So, kudos in that respect. Thank you. But thats the job of any editor, really. And lets go to the next slide, if we can. And im going to read a quote from a letter written by private Victor Gould to the parents of private george clark. Ms george was struck with a shell tearing his body most desperately and tearing both legs almost entirely off. He lived one hour and then quietly fell asleep, leaving many true and loving, and i trust, christian friends, to mourn his loss. Tell my parents, said he, that i die a brave man and in defense of my country. Wow. But the thing that surprises me, mark, on this, he wrote the parents about the gory, gory details of his death. My experience, in general, whether its about death or specific details about the wounded or horrible circumstances, i was often surprised what they would write to their mom or their sister or their spouse or significant other. That might almost seem inappropriate. But again, as i had said they had, as the soldiers, they need to express themselves, to get this sort of out. And to people back home, what was going on, but for them, as a kind of release of whats going on. Theres another thing going on here. And this is covered in a book by drew, called this republic is suffering. And she talked bourt, at that time, what they call the good death. That is being surrounded by family and friends as youre on your Death Bed and you have your affairs in order. Youre wishing people well and those kinds of things. Well, a civil War And Battle fields totally mess that up. Totally complicate it and so on. But for loved ones or parents to find out the circumstances of their sons or brothers or Husbands Death was of a comfort to them. Even if there were gory details that were being described to them. That was part of knowing how it occurred. And that is as close as they could get to being with them or experiencing that. At that moment. Amazing. Well, the next one i selected was Sergeant William Smith to his wife. Its talking about what some call the peculiar institution, what we know today as slavery. William smith was not only a fairly good writer, but expressive and he seemed naturally inquisitive. So, he talked to southerners. When they were in occupied territory. And his wife, who he called pally, asked him this question about slavery. You have to remember that the median age of union soldiers are probably Illinois Soldiers as well, was around, between 23 and 24 years of age. Median meaning that, at that age, half are younger and half are older than that. That means theres a lot of teenagers and people in their early 20s, who are soldiers. Many who had never left their state. I was just reading a letter from someone who lived only two counties away from the Mississippi River but had never seen the Mississippi River until he went to alton and had never seen a Steam Boat before. So, his wife is asking him about slavery. Him about slavery. We should hear this clip. Now to the question how does slavery look to the naked eye . The shortest answer that i can give and express myself upon the subject is that it looks many times worse than i ever imagined. It is true that i have never saw the lash across the backs of old men and grayheaded women but i have seen men plow, how, chop and maul rails without enough clothing om them to hide their bodies. I have seen pregnant women at the hardest work with only an excuse for a shirt and short petty coat on. I have seen dozens of men, women and children at the different kinds of work under a white man that was almost as ignorant as the slaves he drove. I have seen one woman that has tended 18 acres of Corn And Suck ld an infant that was born after she commenced to break the ground. I can seen a young wife, modest and nice, walking along the street, a Slave Woman walking close behind her, carrying the firstborn of her modest miss stress. Look at their figures. It is very nearly the same. See their backs . Oh, says one, theyre both alike. Look at their gait, it is nearly the same. Examine their features, look close, they certainly resemble. Ask the young miss stress where she got her sleigh, she tells you it was a Wedding Gift from her father. The secret is out. They are halfsisters. Look at them again. They favor in every feature and action. The only difference is in the color. Now, were hearing a letter written by william, read by his wife and you can imagine shes reading to relatives, going to the local store, are there opportunities she would share this letter with people . The point that is being made a very poignant and very well expressed. It just really sinks in what slavery can be like or what they had also called amalgamation, that is, the joining of two different races which is a much different opinion than than, you know its, you know, its old thinking, if you will. But he makes this point so well, what really goes on in a Slavery State or under slavery conditions. What is sort of interesting about this is so there was this little something at the end of the letter and i have it in the book here and it says in the same letter along the margin of its last page written sideways is a drawing of a single hand pointing to a sort of postscript and the postscript was charlie which was smiths Tent Mate says for you to burn this without reading it, because it was, you know, such a topic to put into a letter like that, that you should just burn the letter, dont even read it. So fortunately mary ignored that jest request, but its great that we have it and can learn from it. Thats the point of this book and letters, we get into their hearts and souls by reading these things. You have to remember that we are essentially reading other Peoples Mail and i have to admit theres kind of an allure to that but also it was something never intended for us to read. I think if those people were still alive and they, you know, found out some of their personal letters were showing up in a book, they might be aghast at that, but for us as historians its invaluable. Have you heard from some of the dee depend events of these people who are in the book . Yes, some i have and of course theyre not the original soldiers, theyre, you know, great, greatgrandchildren, those kinds of things and theyre thrilled. Ive gotten some really nice comments, people have shared portraits, other people have seen who is in there and they say, hey, i have something about that person. So ive discovered a number of other things and a lot of those things i have put up on the website. So the website becomes like makes the book a little bit more of a living document. The next thing i wanted to focus on in this next slide is a little bit about the motivations and the feelings, beliefs that the soldiers themselves had about the cause theyre fighting for. And so ive selected a passage that touches both on the Emancipation Proclamation which was written after an teed a. M. In september of 1962 and actually went into force January 1st of 1863 and then a little bit about the upcoming election of honest abe, old abe. We will play this one from Captain Amos Huff steter. In answer to part of Owens Letter in regard to the opinion of the soldiers in regard to the Emancipation Proclamation, et cetera, i have this to say, that if the people of the north knew how the soldiers cursed them for allowing men to speak treason as they do now, i think they would put a stop to it. Men that came here strong democrats are democrats no longer. Men who came here with no intention of interfering with slavery are now abolitionists. And in regard to their opinion of the administration, if the soldiers can vote in 1864 for president of the u. S. , old abe will again be president. You may not believe what i have told you, but if you live to see 1864, you will find my words true if old abe carries out what he has commenced. All though we are tired of war, we would rather fight for the next ten years than compromise with treason. Strong words. Yeah, now, again, im going to have to offer a counterpoint. This is not necessarily the Majority Opinion among the soldiers. And this is especially something like this which is somewhat political. Really reflects the diversity of democrats and republicans in illinois. In fact, illinois is in some ways at this time almost a microcosm of the entire nation on how its divided into terms of opinion. So the opinions on the Emancipation Proclamation that you find by other soldiers varies quite a bit. Some of them think this is a terrible idea because now the south is going to fight all the harder. They are going to be so mad at us that theyre really going to dig in their heels kind of thing, but a lot of them do look at it first as a war measure, as opposed to a social measure, but they had comments about that as well. Some thought this could be a good thing, some thought, well, this is not a good thing. And i put a lot of that diversity in here. So i wanted to sort of offer that sort of counterpoint just based on what you happen to pick out. If you had picked out one that said, oh, you know, this is a bad idea i would have read one where, hey, this person thinks its a good idea. If you want a little bit more of this or a lot more of this visit the Abraham Lincoln President ial museum. Absolutely. They have this hl way with the dissident voices on all the different opinions, strong opinions they had on this very subject. Yes. Thats one of my favorite parts because it really does show the angst and the difficulty that Abraham Lincoln faced when he was president of the united states. Yeah, at the beginning of the war certainly not all the soldiers in illinois that signed up were abolitionists, in fact, they would have been quite a minority, but some of them came to see this when it did happen, that is, the Emancipation Proclamation, that it was a good thing because it would shorten the war and they would get home sooner. That was the overriding thought that would be in the back of that i ever minds all the time. Thats why they kept up on politics and newspapers, because they were looking for signs and symptoms of the war starting to come to a conclusion and when will they be home. There werent any that said this is only going to lengthen the war . There were some that said, yes, this could potentially lengthen the war. I think most Historians Today would come down on the side of the latter, but thats a debatable point as oftentimes historical issues are. Now, ive highlighted a lot of the things i found really interesting. Tell me what some of your favorite letters are. Okay. So as a social scientist i would have to say that my favorites were the 165 soldiers that made the cut that made it into the book. Some of them wrote more eloquently, expressed themselves better, than others, but every one of them had something to say that contributed to the book. So its probably not the answer youre looking for, but i really dont have any favorites. Now, it is your progressive as a reader to have favorites on what you happen to like and thanks for sharing those, but im glad to have all of them, quite frankly. As you mentioned, i gave a series of presentations on the main civil war battles during the centennial. Yeah. So that was my deep dive into civil war history. I learned so much going through that process. This exercise was quite different for you. You had to have enough knowledge about the war to put all these things in context but it strikes me that you got to know these soldiers on a much more personal level. Is that a good way of saying it . Yeah, the way that i sort of think of it is, you know, a lot of times when you read civil war books that are about particular battles, campaigns and so on, generals, those are great. Thats a top down approach, my approach was the opposite, was to start with the boots in the mud, the soldiers, what their stories were and coalesce those into those topics, those sections and chapters. So i was very much a bottom up approach to find out what the civil war was like for them. Lets see, you went to you got your degree in anthology. Anthropology. Anthropology. I knew i was going to mess it up. Then your dem grafr, you are a statistician, i know you do archeology as well and then poetry and then this. Yeah. Yeah. Where is the link with the poetry and then this with all those other things . I have always enjoyed i have always enjoyed writing, but im not what i think of as a naturally gifted writer. I need a lot of practice so poetry helped me smooth out my style and writing this book one of the preludes to the book not only was the poetry but as i was collecting the letters i started to see some of these themes. So i had a selection of colleagues, friends, even people in other countries who could care less about the civil war, each friday i would send out an email which was themebased, something that things that i had been reading in letters and i was surprised at how eager people that didnt even know anything about the civil war wanted to hear these personal stories. So that got me practicing writing and got me to get those topics together. Then the book came together after that when i decided finally to do a book that coalesced. So i call these sort of the 46 he is say period because there was 46 weeks in succession where i sent out these email blasts to people and more and more people said, hey, i want to get those, too, kind of thing and finally i was sending it out to 40 or 50 people. In the process of reading all these letters, then, did you have a sense that you could really get inside these men and what they were thinking and how they approached life and their ambitions and their struggles . You really got to know them. And thats why i felt it was so important to provide these brief bios at the end. Its appendix a and its a big chunk of the book. I have had some readers come back to me and say, you know, i read those separately. I read all of them. As opposed to something you could use as a reference. Oh, william smith, what happened to him . Kind of thing. Well, yes, you can find that out and easy to look that person up. So what did happen to some of these men . So lets pick a few of them. You started with Thomas Seacord. Thomas ended up never seeing his wife again, he got sick in mississippi, he ended up in a hospital and he was what sometimes happened to people that were in hospitals, they didnt necessarily have in the field nurses and so on, so they expected people that were not so sick to sort of help out the other Hospital Staff with some of the patients. He would go around and he would tell Soandso Diedover Night or so on and a couple weeks later he was one of those people. He was buried there. William smith who i had just mentioned who wrote so beautifully ended up dying also in mississippi at i dont want to call it the battle of coffeeville, it was more like sort of a large skirmish. I actually wrote a little bit about that for those of you who are he will knew state historical society members in Illinois Heritage in their July August Issue about how about Captain Norton . He was wooing this young lady he had never met. Captain norton was an aide to general palmer and when they were in georgia they were taking in part of the sort of overview of where, you know, the troops on the union and confederate side were there and Wylie Saord in one of his books, i think its called maybe profiles in courage where he picks out various soldiers. Turns out norton i found out later was one that he had picked out and so there was a couple of confederate sharp shooters who had snuck into range and they were aiming to shoot palmer. So they fired and they missed. But they hit norton. I think he got hit in the head and he died within a minute or two. So he never ever met Molly Chapman back in illinois. Ive got to believe that you get so involved with these peoples stories that that kind of stabs you in the heart when you get a piece of news like that. There are so many stories. There are the ones that, you know, were in there were pows and i have a different chapter on pows because so here is the beauty of civil war letters, they were not censored. So thats why you get all this great information. The one exemption to that is prisoner of war letters. You couldnt say who you were with or so on. You could say im feeling okay or, you know, i have a touch of pneumonia or whatever it might be, but they couldnt give away much in the way of details. So they were very kind of bland, but for that chapter as an exception i took some of the soldiers reminiscences and what they said about being at belle Island Prisoner of War Camp in Richmond Or Andersonville in georgia and some of the other ones to sort of flesh out the illinois soldier experience. I think one of the most tragic events of the civil war happened after the civil war when all those prisoners released from andersonville get on the theme ship. Sultana. Sulta in. A. Yes. Which sinks in the middle of the Mississippi River taking scores of hundreds of them to their death. The boilers blew, it was way overloaded and a lot of people drowned. Theres so much to talk about in this book, its such an excellent read. I hope that those who are watching us today or in the future will take the opportunity to buy this. Just a couple more questions here. How well has the book been received . I think i think it has been wellreceived. Earlier this year the Illinois State historical society honored the book by giving it the Russell P. Strange memorial book of the Year Award for 2020 and because of the pandemic i got that news through snail mail, you know, a certificate came in and you could have pushed me over with a feather i was so shocked, but they had recognized it as thats our highest award for for publishing in history. The book now is starting to take on a life of its own, there is someone who contacted me, they said they would like to develop a curriculum from that. Somebody else this is actually down at siu carbondale, it sounds like they are interested in doing podcasts of parts of the book and then uploading those. They call themselves Blanket Fort Radio theaters. So thats one of those things you can put in a Search Engine and it will pop up what theyre currently working on. Similar to what we had in terms of finding people who are willing to bring these quotes to life . Exactly. That sounds ideal for a podcast. I hope they go through with it. That would be ex will ent. How many other books are there out there like this in other states or collections of letters that have been edited in the manner that youve done it. Well, theres quite a number of collections that are one soldier or in some cases what i call the double rainbow is when you have the soldiers letters and the spouses or, you know, those people at home. So you can kind of see the exchange. But in terms of collections of letters, there are some that are small collections, maybe 20 soldiers because they are in the same regiment or from the same area or from a variety of areas, but the one that i found that comes the closest and was done before my book it was by john zimm called this wicked rebellion and it is about letters from wisconsin, but its all letters sent to editors and so people have kept these scrap books of all of this Wisconsin Newspapers so they had all these soldiers letters. They are not personal letters, sometimes its dear editor, blah, blah, blah. Sometimes they are letters that went home and somebody at home said lets put this in the local newspaper. Some of them are a little more barred guarded or maybe have an ax to grind or to bring up a Point Or Something like that. What i used was just simply personal letters. If it was official correspondence or some other thing that was not personal like diaries, for example, diaries are not necessarily conversational and soldiers kept those for various reasons, i didnt include those. I just wanted those personal letters, those personal stories with those details. I think so much of what youve got in the book, these are universal themes that any soldier from any northern state could relate to and the public would be well served to read this. If they want to understand Pennsylvania Or Ohio or new york even. I think now its time to turn it over to joe, he might have a couple comments or questions for us. Yes, wonderful presentation, gentlemen, and to Mark Flotow, thank you so much as someone who was born and raised at the very southern tip of the state, thank you for correctly pronouncing my hometown cairo, illinois correctly. We have had folks checking in from arizona, florida, kansas, virginia, texas, oregon, nevada, rhode island, massachusetts, even a viewer in yemen around the world watching today. Terrific. We have several questions that tie into the broader themes of this. William wants to know, mark, were there any families and letters who had sons on both sides of the conflict . None that i read for this particular book, although theres certainly those sorts of circumstances. Now, i did have one or two instances where there was a Father And Son that went to fight in the same regiment, as if the father was going to keep an eye on the Son Kind of thing. So that they would experience together. I was surprised actually, even though as i had said earlier the median age was around 23, 23 1 2, how many soldiers i found that were in their 40s or 50s or had been mexican war veterans that still went on and went into the civil war. And i dont mean necessarily higher officers, some of these were privates that were in their 50s. So, no, i didnt come across those but some Father Son that went together as family members, and brothers, too. Lisa wants to know do any of the letters speak about having seen lincoln himself or who had known him . I cannot think anybody who said that they saw lincoln, but there is a very interesting letter where soldiers in springfield that were waiting for their final Pay And Discharge went to the Lincoln Home and talked to the woman or the lady of the house which was actually mrs. Tilton. The tiltons had a rental agreement with the Lincoln Family to live there while the lincolns were in washington, d. C. So you find out a little bit about the Lincoln Home. One thing that was shared with the Lincoln Home folks here was that they mentioned that the lady of the house played the piano for them and they said this is the first Thing Weve heard that there might have been a piano there. Who put it there, whether it was the tiltons or the lincoln, thats for somebody else to figure out. If i could add a quick note on that, the vast majority of Illinois Soldiers fought in the western theater. Lincoln saw an awful lot of soldiers but it was almost entirely in the eastern theater of operationes. Very good point. Thats correct. A couple of questions that tie in together. First from brad in silver spring, maryland, wants to know you touched on a little bit with one of the soldiers letters but what did the soldiers write about lincoln and how his actions affected morale . All right. So there is a chapter called leaders, generals and old abe. So soldiers wrote a lot about those that were over them, that were in charge and whether, you know, some of them were very happy with the decisions that were made and some of them were very critical. So there were certainly comments about old able. As the one that you had picked up and we had read here that, you know, abe is the man for us, there were others that were critical when things looked bad, you know, when the war was going badly, that our leaders they are not together. Again, whats in the back of their mind is when are we going to get home. When is this war going to be over. I think it is relevant to suggest, though, that the soldiers given a chance to vote in that 1864 election, most would say overwhelmingly they came down on the side of lincoln and not mcclellan. That is absolutely true. As a footnote to that because of the way that the constitution in illinois was, soldiers in the field were not one of the states, illinois was not one of the states that could vote in the field. There were some that were able to get Home And Vote but that was the only way they could do that. We mentioned a while ago one of our viewers this afternoon has chimed in from yemen. Yes. Angela says greetings from germany. Hi. And follows up to brads question, says, brilliant question. She would like to expand that to whether there are any letters where the writer and the recipient were on different sides of the conflict. Not in the letters that i read, i do have a few letters where they wrote to an uncle that was like in another regimen or fellow soldiers that were perhaps in another theater of war, but, no, i didnt for this sample of 165 that i used, i didnt have an instance like that. Thats an interesting thing. Mark asked did you see any letters from deserters on either side and their reasons for desertion. There are definitely letters where they talk about people that did desert or sometimes it was an instance that they called french leave and french leave means its something where in france its where somebody leaves a party without telling the Host Or Hostess that theyre leaving kind of thing. Its sort of a slightly impolite thing. So for the soldiers french leave was something where im going to leave for a little bit and then im going to come back. Well, in the militarys eyes thats desertion, but some went back because, oh, my spouse is about to deliver, or my father is dying. And they couldnt get a furlough. So they might desert for that particular reason. Sometimes they werent caught, sometimes they got pardoned. Often soldiers saw themselves, hey, i volunteered, so all this military stuff, you know, is flexible. Well, that, of course, is not true but they tried to flex it in certain circumstances. And lastly nice to hear from Guinea Lee on her Lunch Hour watching from just down the hall here. Hi, guinea. Literally in the same building. She is part of our conservation preservation team, they take all of those old documents and other items and restore them. Incredible work that they do. She wants to know did you use letters from other institutions to draw from your book . No, i actually did not. I looked at other institutions, i looked at the logan museum, i looked at the library down at carbondale, the university southern Illinois University at carbondale and a few other places and for various reasons i ended up not using them. The letters that i found here covered not only the span of topics but also the geography and backgrounds and political ideology that sort of spanned the gamut. The other thing is i am, you know, as a former dem grafr i realize im in the last quarter or last fifth of my life so ive got to get a move on if im going to get the book out kind of thing. Theres much more out there, but, no, i was able to do this and because im an independent scholar and i dont have other funding sources to be able to travel, although there are more and more things that are interesting that are online, i did enjoy looking at the real thing here. Well, thats certainly a testament to folks that are doing research of any kind, chances are good if it has to do with illinois, the civil war or lincoln, you can likely find it at our library. Joe, there are more than 1,000 civil War Era collections right here in this institution. And one last thing as we have about a minute before we wrap up, i will let everybody get back to work or whatever else theyre doing this afternoon. Mark flotow, how can folks get a couple of in their letters, in their words, illinois civil war soldiers write home . So at the bottom of this slide is the book website. Markflotow. Net. Its strictly about the book. If you go there on the homepage on the right side there are links to siu press, there are links to various reviews of the book, there is all sorts of different pages, question of the Week Kind of thing which is, again, its a friday thing, every friday i update with new information. There is the a dem dumb thing. If you wanted to read that full description of that letter about missionary ridge, it is on that page and it goes on for quite a while. Here locally in springfield i recommend books on the square because they have copies that ive already put my name to. Barnes and noble has been known to have t but of course theres the usual sources, you can go to google or amazon. I do recommend siu pret, they have a two for one deal where you can get the electronic version, the E Book Version and the regular book for a reduced price, its like two for one. They gave me a copy of the electronic version and i said, yeah, thanks, i dont know what ill do with it. I do a lot with it. The book has an incredible index, i hired one of the best people possible, one of the readers. Glenna Schroeder Line to do that, but it is so great to use the electronic version to word search. So youve Read Something and you go, hey, where was that thing about slavery to the naked eye . And you can just put in those words and it will pop up in the e book. So i found its worth having both. Needless to say, a great christmas gift. Yes, christmas is coming right up. Thank you, joe. Just trying to help. Just trying to help. Mark depue, thank you for a wonderful job of moderating the discussion and Mark Flotow the Author And Editor of well, actually the civil war soldiers wrote the letters, but you educated it all together, put it into context in their letters, in their words, illinois civil war soldiers write home. Thank you for the presentation today. A wonderful discussion. Next Historian Michael Shaffer looks at the life of Thomas Wallace Colley who served in the confederate first Virginia Calvary during the civil war. Using journal entries and letters mr. Shaffer discusses the troopers experiences at key battles such as bull ran and antietam a