Letter from the Front: New Year's Day, 1863

[This article is from Dan Brown of Waterford and commander of the 111th PA Volunteer Inf. Regiment re-enactor group from Waterford, PA.]  

Hi Guys, 

  This is a letter that our old member Pat Knierman posted on the CW roundtable site in Erie.

Somber thoughts to begin the new year.

Dan

Aftermath of the Battle of Fredericksburg. Sgt. Samuel V. Dean of Company K, 145th Pennsylvania Infantry, writes to Mrs. Priscilla Harris concerning the fate of her grandson, Pvt. George Harris of Company A of the 145th. The letter is part of the Harris/Silverthorn collection in the PA State Archives.

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Camp one mile from

Falmoth Jan 1st 1863

GrandMother Harris

As it is your request that I inform you about your

Grandson George Harris remains. Wheather you can ever

recover them. I am very sorry to say that ther is no

posible chance to hope. he was kild on the frount line

at his post as a brave and noble young soldier. he

remaned ther four days before we went with a flag of

Truse to bury our dead. Then a detale of Twenty men was

caled for out of our Regt. I wanted to go so I

volinteerd to go over to the Battle fied to see if I

could find some of our Boys. Wehn we go ther they was

all Burried but 76 men. I look at them over and over

again but could not find anyone that I could make out

to be George Harris. Franklin Sweett was along with us.

I caled to him to see if I had not found George. he

said the close was different and it was not George.

I gave it up. Those 76 men was burried in a trench and

ther was no one burried ther that I coud make out to be

George Harris. They were very much changed in ther

countanances. So much so that it would have been very

difficult to have found him amoung so many.

Then we went into the City and found 16 men in a garden

that had been taken out of a Hospitle that had died by

lose of leg or an arm. Those were not so much changed.

They had lost all thier blood. We found one man

Lutannat Brown of Erie. He was brought acrost the river

and burried. George was not among them. That encludes

all I saw.

Mrs. Harris we of the 145th Regt are all caled to mourn

the lose of your GrandSon George. He was a soldier

brother and we feal his lose very much. Our ranks are

thined and we all feal to sympethise with you in your

afflictions. It pains me to say to you that his boddy

can never be found among so many at this time to ever

be known by his friends. I have wrote to you very

plain. I do so because if you had the least hope you

would try to obtain his boddy and I know it would be in

vain even to try. I must close and I can only say to

you I morne the lose of George with you, and hope to

meet him at Gods right hand.

Respecfully you obedient servant Widow Harris

Saml. V. Dean

PS Mrs. Dean you take this letter up to Widdow Harris

and read it to her. She may not be able to read my

writing. If ther is any thing that would wound her

fealings, you had better not read it to her. You can

tell her about it. See some one about it. Mrs. Thomas

and see what they think about it or Mrs. Luke Harris.

=======================

The letter was sent to Sgt. Dean's wife back in Springfield, PA for her to take to the widowed 80 year old Mrs. Harris, their neighbor. The body of 17 year old George Harris was never identified and most likely he rests among the unknown in Fredericksburg National Cemetery.

The Lieutenant Brown mentioned was 2nd Lt. Robert Mavor Brown from Company K of the 145th. The 20 year old was the son of John and Nancy Brown of Erie. Lt. Colonel David McCreary of the 145th recalled that as the regiment marched onto the battlefield, a shell exploded in the ranks of Company K in front of him. The shell tore off the leg of Lt. Brown, the head of another man, and wounded several others. Lt. Brown was carried to a nearby house belonging to Lt. Maury of the confederate army, where he died unattended by anyone of the 145th. After his body was found, it was brought across the river and buried in the yard of Chatham Manor. Lt. Brown's father arrived a few days later and had the body moved back to Erie, where he was laid to rest in Erie Cemetery. His long lost tombstone was finally uncovered a few years back when I was unable to find it and asked the cemetery to probe for it.
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For information on the 145th PA Volunteers, see the appropriate pull-down tab on the home page of this Blog. A Microsoft Powerpoint history of the Regiment is available both on that page or by clicking this hyperlink: Powerpoint on the 145th PA Volunteer Infantry Regiment. 

Barbarian Cruelty: Narrative of Thomas Troughton, One of the Millions of White Slaves in Africa

Barbarian Cruelty; or, an Accurate and Impartial Narrative of the unparallelled Sufferings and almost incredible Hardships of the BRITISH CAPTIVES belonging to The Inspector Privateer, Capt. Rd. Veale, During their Slavery under Muley Abdullah, Emperor of Fez  and Morocco, from Jan. 1745-6, to their happy Deliverance, by the Bounty of King George II. Administered by William Latton, Esq. Ambassador to Morocco, in December, 1750.       

This summary of one man's enslavement for almost five years in Morocco, Africa, is offered on this Blog devoted primarily to the American Civil War because it deals with the all-important subject of human slavery. In the 17th through the 19th centuries, Americans were fully aware that slavery was practiced on all continents and among all races. This isn't so well known today. As a former Social Studies Coordinator for two large school districts in Florida for over three decades, I was responsible for textbook purchases that amounted to tens of millions of dollars. Without exception, the books our students read de-emphasized the enslavement of Europeans and Americans by various groups of what today are known as "people of color." Rather, through the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion mandates of all levels of government they often only heard about the evil effects of "white privilege."  Few students today are aware that for hundreds of years Europeans and Americans were seized in raids and taken as slaves to Africa. Our ancestors, however, were quite familiar with the narratives of those white slaves who returned home and wrote about their experiences. We tend to forget today that the main characters in the first novels in the English and Spanish languages--Daniel DeFoe's Robinson Crusoe and Miquel Cervantes' Don Quixote--both spent time as slaves in North Africa. This narrative of Thomas Troughton was republished in 1785 and represents only one a many such examples. Robert Davis, author of Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters, estimates that upwards of 1.3 million white Christians were sent to the Barbary States of North Africa during the 16th to 19th centuries. This number, however, does not include those seized in raids starting in the 8th to 16th century--times when hundreds of thousands were killed or seized in endless slaves raids. Very likely the number of Europeans killed or enslaved during these eight centuries ran into the millions as well. Nor does the figure produced by professor Davis include the vast numbers seized by the Sultanate of Morocco or the millions of Eastern Europeans who seized as slaves by the Ottoman Empire--both over many, many centuries.
     This narrative is posted here in the hope that the stories of these countless victims of human slavery will not be forgotten.   

To access and/or download a nine-page summary of this book, go HERE.

To access a complete copy of this book from the Open Archive Internet Library, go HERE.   

The writer has been a social studies educator, founder of Rho Kappa -- the National Social Studies Honor Society -- past president of the Florida Council for the Social Studies, and a former Elementary School Principal of the Year in Lee County, Florida. He may be reached at: jsbovee@aol.com.