September 17, 1864
Today’s letter to Roe has a far more somber tone than almost any of the letters in the collection. The regiment had been in the same area roughly a year before, bringing up various memories and making Mark realize much had changed since then. He especially recalls fallen comrades: “…And McKeighan Jones and Tanner and Wilson, Galt and Cravens were all there at roll-call with as good prospects of going through the war as safe as any of us, but alas! They are numbered among the silent dead! Martyrs for the freedom and liberty of our country.” Mark sounds so sad in this letter. After being in the war for about two years now, he sounds tired and a little dejected. It also highlights the fact that war does not distinguish between individuals, it takes whomever it wants. Any soldier who goes into battle is not guaranteed protection. Mark knew that he was just as likely to either live or die as anyone else in his regiment. Another quote also stood out to me: “Then I thought of the Old Mess we numbered seven in the old tent that night, but now I and Nelson is all that is left! Two dead, two in Southern dungeons, my own brother desperately wounded and in a hospital surrounded by strangers, and the other two worn out by sickness. It was a sad picture, but it is only one among thousands that this terrible war had made!” Mark doesn’t frequently mention casualties or his specific involvement in battles. This is one of the rare occasions where he is reflecting on the death and destruction that have personally affected him. Typically, he summarizes battles, talks about the weather or the countryside, or focuses on topics about home. In terms of military topics, Abbott walks Roe through the regiment’s recent movements. It really covered quite a bit of ground. He references two Confederate leaders in particular Lieutenant General Nathan Bedford Forrest and General Joseph Wheeler, who I thought were worth looking into. Forrest was actually one of the more feared Confederate generals. By the summer of 1862, "he began to make the kind of lightning raids that made him perhaps the single most feared cavalry commander of the entire war." He quickly climbed the leadership ladder, rapidly rising from volunteering as a private to his lieutenant general title. Overall, he seems to have been very successful in defeating various Union forces, causing Union General William T. Sherman to state, “that devil Forrest must be hunted down and killed if it costs ten thousand lives and bankrupts the federal treasury.” Forrest definitely was a force to be reckoned with, which is consistent with what Abbott says in the letter. He comments that his regiment encountered another group that were in a “big scare” due to the large Confederate force nearby led by Forrest and General Joseph Wheeler. While not gaining quite the same reputation was Forrest, Wheeler nevertheless proved himself to be an able leader. He advocated for a more modern approach to cavalry units by adopting the idea of mounted infantry. This was a combination of the traditional cavalry, which fought on horseback, and infantry, which fought on foot. In his method, the soldiers would ride on horse, which “enabled them to move quickly into a position, where they then dismounted and fought as infantry. In fact, Wheeler’s cavalry was really the only line of Southern defense during William T. Sherman’s raids in the later parts of the war. It’s pretty interesting that Abbott’s regiment encountered or were at least near these well-known Confederate leaders. Works Cited: Encyclopedia of Alabama. “Joseph Wheeler.” Encyclopedia of Alabama. http://www.encyclopediaofalabama.org/face/Article.jsp?id=h-2140 (accessed March 3, 2014). The Civil War Trust: Saving America’s Civil War Battlefields. “Nathan Bedford Forrest.” http://www.civilwar.org/education/history/biographies/nathan-bedford-forrest.html (accessed March 3, 2014).
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AuthorTessa Wakefield, student intern at the Concordia College Archives, assembled these blog entries in 2013-2014 for the Isaac Mark Abbott Civil War Letters Collection. The posts summarize the content of the letters, interpret Abbott's experiences and place them in the larger context of the Civil War. Archives
March 2014
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