Originally aired on December 26, 1997 - In part 174 of our Civil War series, Virginia Tech history professor James Robertson discusses how being away from home and family during Christmas affected the troops.
#174 – Christmas Loneliness
It is difficult to overlook Christmas in the Civil War because the day was so meaningful to millions of people in that embattled age. Yuletide in the mid-nineteenth century was not the huge overly commercialized celebration is has become today. It was instead a gentler more introspective time. A time for drawing together with family and friends.
For Johnny Rebs and Billy Yanks seldom was physical togetherness possible with loved ones back home. Soldiers could only be there in mind and that usually led to anguish. Christmas, 1862, was the first real test of emotions for the soldiers. An Illinois private stationed near Chattanooga looked at ice frozen on the trees and pronounced the view, “the prettiest Christmas tree I ever saw. My, what visions memory raises at those words.” Then the man abruptly admonished himself, “put it away,” he told himself. “There is no such thing recognized as Christmas by U. S. Army regulations so quit your dreaming.”
Lieutenant Jonathan Evans of Blacksburg sent a letter to his cousin that same Christmas. “I anticipate you will have a nice time at your proposed dinner,” Evans wrote. “I would like to be one of the participants, but alas I am doomed to while away the time in dull camp and it ain’t worthwhile to think of anything else but one can’t help it sometimes to think of friends far away with the faint hope that one day he may be spared to see them again.” Evans was killed in action just before the next Christmas.
With soldiers of North and South normal loneliness became deeper and more painful during the Christmas season. In December, 1863, a Union cannoneer stated: “Another Christmas finds our great strategic country in the toils of war and the chiming of the bells is lost in the roar of artillery. Dear Old Christmas rich to memory in all the simple joys and fond familiar sanctities of home are coming sadly upon me in my exile with the iron men of war.”
At precisely the same time, Colonel Frederick Cavada of the 14th Pennsylvania was a prisoner of war in Richmond. Cavada made this poignant observation, “Christmas Day, a day which was made for smiles not for sighs, for laughter not for tears, for the hearth not the prison, someone is playing Home Sweet Home on a violin. The faces of the prisoners are all sad. I see that one by one the figures stroll away and that they all seem to have discovered something of unusual interest out the window.”
Countless soldiers expressed the hope at Christmastime that they might live to be with loved ones again in a yuletide not far away. Most of them were fortunate to see that dream come true. Harper’s Weekly the most popular publication in America had those veteran soldiers in mind when it published these lines at Christmas, 1865.
Today at the home beside the hearth,
warm with the ruddy embers glow.
We keep our Christmas,
so unlike the Christmas of a year ago.
When in the camp at earliest dawn,
The grimy-throated cannon woke.
As slumbers and within the East,
the golden light of morning broke.
Bring holly rich with berries red,
and bring the sacred mistletoe.
Fill high each glass and let hearts,
with kindliest feelings flow.
So sweet it seems at home once more,
to sit with those we hold most dear.
And keep absence one again,
to keep the merry Christmas here.
From all of us in the Virginia Tech family to you our listeners Merry Christmas everyone and the happiest of New Year’s to come.
