Richard Benwell’s Fourth of July
By Robert Kuehl & Greg M. Romaneck
After being away from home for months, Captain Mason Tyler of the 37th MA in the Army of the Potomac took time at the end of the day to write a letter home to his parents.
Hundreds of miles away, William Kennedy of the 55th Illinois Infantry took pen in hand and wrote home in order to stay in touch with his wife, “Jane, when you write direct your letters to Benton Barracks in care of Company G 55th Regiment Illinois Volunteers and when we go from here the letters will follow us. Letters come every day from Camp Douglas, none for me. You must write often, how I want to know how you get along with the saw hog. If you have, how did you get it? How do you like the barn…Did you get that singing book? Have you seen Evans? If not tell Peter Gallagher to see him for you. I think I have written enough this time.”
In May of 1862, M.H. Johnston an Arkansas man serving in a Confederate regiment from Texas wrote home to his wife Gracy and described a feeling of separation that all too many Civil War soldiers on both sides must have felt, “Oh, I long to see you once more, and if it be my heavenly master’s will I shall meet you again, but if it be not the will of God we don’t, go on and be faithful and serve your heavenly father, and we will meet each other in the world where men’s hills, lakes nor vales, can separate us no more but there we can live and sing and praise God and his holy angels together for ever and ever; but I do trust to my redeemer that I shall see your lovely faces once more, for you may rest assured that of all the pleasures that could be granted to me upon this earth, that would be the greatest at this time…”
These few snippets from three letters taken from private collections are but a tiny sampling of the almost incalculable number of letters written by Civil War soldiers during the four years of war. In an age where some modicum of public education, linked to a desire to have literacy a part of most people’s lives, the stage was set for the enormous letter writing campaign that took place both within the opposing armies and on the homefront as well. Civil War historian Christian Hager, in his book I Remain Yours, estimates that soldiers in the Army of the Potomac alone wrote more than one million letters a month during the war. Hager goes on to estimate that over two-hundred-and-fifty million letters were written by Union soldiers during the course of the war. Since it is far more difficult to track the number of Confederate letters that were written due to a less effective postal system and more haphazard recordkeeping, it is likely that millions of southern soldiers and civilians sent and received letters. Yet, despite the incredible quantity of Civil War soldier’s letters that were dispatched, it remains a striking experience to discover one, read it, and try to think back to what the writer was experiencing when he took pen in hand.
In many cases, these soldier’s letters talked about common themes such as homesickness, a yearning to be right with God, a desire to stay in touch with others, and simple requests for updates on everyday life. These letters also leave behind a trail different in construction, if not in content, then the emails, text messages, video chats and social media posts of contemporary military personnel and their loved ones. While it will be interesting to see how those modern postings are handled by historians, it remains true that, until very recently, soldiers away from their families took pen in hand and wrote home to stay in touch and receive emotional sustenance in the form of literary human contact from loved ones far away. This poignant truth makes these surviving documents compelling evidence of the emotional toll of war.
airly recently, a mutual friend had the good fortune to come across a small treasure trove of 19th century letters at, of all places, a garage sale. Our friend’s letters were grouped into three separate bunches each of which were dated from different historical periods in a specific family’s existence. One bundle of letters, amounting to perhaps a dozen in total, were written during the Civil War to and from several family friends and relatives. One of these letters stood out both because of when and where it was written, and due to some of the observations the writer made about a very significant event in the war. The writer was Richard Benwell of the 37th Illinois, a common soldier who happened to take the time to describe momentous events.
Richard Benwell was born into a farming family in Lake County, Illinois. Benwell’s home town was Hainseville, a small settlement established in 1836 and located in the northeastern corner of Illinois. Benwell volunteered at the start of the Civil War and joined Company C of the 37th Illinois. Mustered in on September 18,1861, Richard Benwell served his full three-year enlistment, re-enlisted in 1864, and was finally mustered out of service in May of 1866. During his time in service, Benwell fought at Prairie Grove, Pea Ridge, Fort Blakely, and in anti-guerilla campaigns against Quantrill and other raiders in Missouri. During the course of the war, the 37th Illinois would lose 98 men killed in battle or who died of wounds, and a further 169 who perished of disease. Known as the “Illinois Greyhounds,” The 37th also took part in General Grant’s Vicksburg Campaign, and it is that strategic Union victory that the most interesting of all the garage sale letters addresses.
On July 4, 1863, Richard Benwell took time to write to his father, Charles, back in Hainseville. After participating in the grueling campaign, battles, marches, and siege that were part and parcel of Grant’s attempt to take Vicksburg, Mississippi, Benwell was alert to any hint that the fighting might be over. But despite the potential of great news, Benwell began his letter home in a traditional manner, “I now sit down once more to write a few lines to you to let you know that I am well and I hope that these few lines will find you enjoying the same blessing…” However, rather quickly Benwell shifts gears and mentions that “we have had some great doings here for the last two days.” Those “doings” were surrender negotiations which Benwell described in this way, “on the third of this month the rebels Generals and our Generals had some doings to gather and while that was going on our boys and the rebels where (sic) a visiting each other.”
Where once there had been bloodshed, now there was fraternization or as Benwell described it, “our boys would go over to the rebels rifle pits and talk with them and they came and saw our boys…” In almost the blink of an eye, men who had been deadly foes were now no more than curiosity seekers. As Benwell noted, “funny to see the change which so short a time had made only a little while before this if any of our boys got their heads above their pits the bullets would fly around like hail and the same would have our boys towards the secesh.”
Richard Benwell took advantage of the truce to also recover a souvenir of unique value. While spending time behind the former enemy lines, Benwell secured a piece of history that he planned on sending home along with his next letter. In Benwell’s words, “I will send you a piece of one of the rebels battle flags which waved on one of their forts only yesterday but not today to today the stars and stripes floated their (sic) in it(s) place for the rebels stronghold was surrendered to us…” Benwell goes on to describe the Confederate surrender as he saw it, “this morning the rebels marched out of their rifle pits and forts and stacks their arms which still remain as they left the and their officers marched them up to town without their implements of war this has been a great fourth of July and will long be remembered…”
With the fighting at Vicksburg over, Richard Benwell spent some time examining the Confederate fortifications he, and his comrade-in-arms, had been struggling to capture. Benwell mentioned his “great curiosity to me to see their works…” Once able to tour the Confederate defenses, Benwell was both impressed and relieved, “their forts are all built on tops of high hills which are natural fortifications of them selves and then with a little work it makes a strong place…” These fearsome defenses were now abandoned and Richard Benwell expressed relief that he, and his fellow Union soldiers, did not have to assault every one of them, “if ever we had…tried to stormed their works I am afraid that we would have had a sore job of it is taken and now I am glad of it…”
Though only a private, the strategic nature of Grant’s capture of Vicksburg was clear to him, “there is only one more place to take and then the Mississippi will be clear from the mouth to the gulf.” That “place” was Port Hudson and it, too, would fall within a few days of Vicksburg’s surrender. In speaking to captured Confederate soldiers, Benwell learned that the last desperate hope they held was relief at the hands of General Joe Johnston. As Benwell wrote, “the rebels say that their only hopes where (sic) that Johnson (sic) would come and help them out of this scrape but he failed to come…” Benwell adds a closing comment on Johnston’s potential breaking of the Union siege with a pithy air of confidence earned by his army’s successes, “if he had (to) have come it would have been a sorry time for him…”
In his final few lines, Richard Benwell acknowledges to his parent that “Father you must excuse this short letter but as I have not much time to write and as you may here (sic) the news before this reaches you so with this I will close from your affectionate son—Richard Benwell.”
With this closing comment, Richard Benwell concluded his brief but illuminating letter. Along with the other men in General Grant’s army, Benwell had accomplished a mighty victory at Vicksburg.
Benwell went on to almost three more years of military service before his return home to Lake County. Little is known about Benwell and his post-war life aside from the fact that he resided in Wauconda, Illinois for a few years after the end of the Civil War. Beyond that fact, only questions remain. Did Benwell remain close to his father and help him with the family farm? Did Richard Benwell struggle to find his place back home and was he dogged by wounds both physical and emotional? Was Benwell one of the thousands of Civil War veterans who went west? Did Richard Benwell wed and raise a family? Like so many veterans of the Civil War, Benwell played his part in historic events that shaped both his country and himself. However, like almost all common folk, he was but one small yet unique fragment in the puzzle that is history. Seen at a distant range, each human piece of history blends into the background of the human saga. Yet, if examined closely through the microscopic lens of deeper historical study, each person makes their individual contribution to shaping the mosaic of human history. Through letters such as Richard Benwell’s Fourth of July correspondence, we are reminded that momentous historical events are no more than the sum total of individual human actions. Richard Benwell was but one Union soldier at Vicksburg but without each such individual being, history would have been different.