In April 1861, Dick and Tally Simpson, sons of South Carolina
Congressman Richard F. Simpson, enlisted in Company A of the Third
South Carolina Volunteers of the Confederate army. Their letters
home--published here for the first time--read like a historical
novel, complete with plot, romance, character, suspense, and
tragedy. In their last year of college when the war broke out, Dick
and Tally were hastily handed their diplomas so they could
volunteer for military duty. Dick was twenty; Tally was
twenty-two.
Well educated, intelligent, and thoughtful young men, Dick and
Tally cared deeply for their country, their family, and their
comrades-in-arms and wrote frequently to their loved ones in
Pendleton, South Carolina, offering firsthand accounts of dramatic
events from the battle of First Manassas in July 1861 to the battle
of Chickamauga in September 1863. Their letters provide a picture
of war as it was actually experienced at the time, not as it was
remembered some twenty or thirty years later. It is a picture that
neither glorifies war nor condemns it, but simply "tells it like it
is." Written to a number of different people, the boys' letters
home dealt with a number of different subjects. Letters to "Pa"
went into great detail about military matters in Lee's Army of
Northern Virginia--troop movements, casualties, and how well
particular units had fought; letters to "Ma" and sisters Anna and
Mary were about camp life and family friends in the army and
usually included requests for much-needed food and clothing;
letters to Aunt Caroline and her daughter Carrie usually concerned
affairs of the heart, for Aunt Caroline continued to be Dick and
Tally's trusted confidante, even whenthey were "far, far from
home."
The value of these letters lies not so much in the detailed
information they provide as in the overall picture they convey--a
picture of how one Southern family, for better or for worse, at
home and at the front--coped with the experience of war. These are
not wartime reminiscences, but wartime letters, written from the
camp, the battlefield, the hospital bed, the picket line--wherever
the boys happened to be when they found time to write home. It is a
poignant picture of war as it was actually experienced in the South
as the Civil War unfolded.
My dear Aunt
With pleasure do I attempt to scratch you a few lines. I have
passed the line of sentinels and am now far out in the woods
sitting on the ground writing with a pencil about long enough to
ketch with two fingers and on a little piece of plank about as
large as my paper, so you must excuse this scrawl....We are now in
the land of danger, far, far from home, fighting for our homes and
those near our hearts. I have been from home for months at a time,
but I never wished to be back as bad in my life. How memory recalls
every little spot, and how vividly every little scene flashes
before my mind. Oh! if there is one place dear to me it is home
sweet home. How many joys cluster there. To join once more our
family circle (I mean you all) and talk of times gone by would be
more to me than all else besides...your
Most affectionate nephew
R W S
General
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