Army of the Potomac: Civil War Letters of William Cross Hazelton the the Eighth Illinois Cavalry Regiment

by Peter G. Beidler

Overview

William Cross Hazelton spent four years as a brave and devoted member of the Union cavalry in the Civil War. During that time he corresponded with Fannie Morrill, the young woman who would become his fiancée and eventually his wife. His letters describe the life of an Illinois volunteer in the Army of the Potomac, the military unit that fought Lee's Army of Northern Virginia in most of the big battles of the Civil War: Williamsburg, Richmond, Antietam, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, and Gettysburg. Hazelton describes the battles from the viewpoint of an ordinary cavalryman slogging through the mud, following erratic orders, surviving for days on enemy turf eating nothing but hardtack, and wondering why the Union army, though superior in numbers and supplies, kept losing battles. After Lee surrendered and Lincoln was assassinated, Hazelton became part of the cavalry posse that chased John Wilkes Booth across the Potomac. His letters breathe new life into a war so devastating that it still scars the American psyche, while exhibiting a moral perspective far ahead of its time.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781603810012
Publisher:	Epicenter Press, Incorporated
Publication date:	09/15/2012
Pages:	242
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.54(d)

About the Author

PETER G. BEIDLER, retired professor of English at Lehigh University and the great-grandson of William Cross Hazelton, has painstakingly researched the historical background of Hazelton's letters to clarify now-obscure references and explain what Hazelton left out in order to shield his future wife from some of the worst horrors of the war. Beidler has published many books and articles and won several teaching awards.

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CHAPTER 1

William Cross Hazelton Before the War

William Cross Hazelton was born on November 14, 1832, in Northfield, New Hampshire, not far north of Concord. He was the sixth child and third son of a family of eight — Eliza, Benson, Mary, Benjamin (Frank), Frances, William, Josephine, and Hortense — only five of whom survived into adulthood. His father, Benjamin Hazelton, was a Methodist minister and a farmer. William's paternal grandfather, also named Benjamin Hazelton, had married Deborah Cross, from an English family that had immigrated to the New World in the 1600s. Young William was given the middle name "Cross," then, to honor his paternal grandmother, but also as a reminder of his Christian heritage. William Hazelton's mother, a Quaker named Elizabeth Folger Hazelton, was the daughter of Walter Folger, the famous Nantucket inventor and politician, and descendant of one of the founding families of Nantucket. Elizabeth was a distant cousin to Benjamin Franklin.

Growing, Learning, Teaching

William attended the New Hampshire Conference Seminary in Northfield, a small school for boys founded in 1845 by Methodists. Its primary purpose at that time was to train boys for work in the Methodist church. (Later it accepted women and evolved into the Tilton Seminary, then into the present Tilton School, a private coeducational college preparatory school.) While there, William lived on campus but did most of his own cooking, though his mother and sister brought him baked goods once a week from home. Apparently William's experience at the seminary nurtured the Christian faith that later was made evident in his letters and in his life of service to others. It was probably there that he first learned to love literature.

There was never an abundance of money in the large family of a poor Methodist minister-farmer. Young William worked in a machine shop for a time at a job he did not enjoy. At age sixteen he became a "boarding around" school teacher in East Andover, New Hampshire, just to the west of Northfield. He spent his summers as a farm hand and for a while worked as a postal clerk. About that time he was fortunate to recover from an attack of typhoid fever, a sometimes-fatal disease usually caused by food or water contaminated with feces from an infected person. William's sister Hortense later died of the disease, as did a number of Civil War soldiers. At mid-nineteenth century, proper sanitation was an inexact science, particularly in the rough-and-tumble confusion of military encampments. Of the more than 600,000 soldiers who died in the Civil War, far more died of disease than of gunfire.

After his recovery from typhoid, William continued to teach in the area. While he was teaching in Canterbury, New Hampshire, a half-dozen miles to the south of Northfield, he apparently met Frances A. "Fannie" Morrill. Later, in a letter to her on July 30, 1863, a few weeks after the Battle of Gettysburg, he recollected the incident:

I recollect the first time I saw you. I handed you an unwashed shirt. And the first time I went to your house, you were dressing chickens! Two very romantic incidents. I recollect how charmed I was with your inviting me in and making some laughing remark about your occupation, instead of blushing and running away as some girls would have done. It was this that won my heart.

If Frances Morrill was one of his students in Canterbury, it is possible that William came to board for a time with the Morrill family as part of his compensation, a compensation that would have included meals, a place to sleep, and laundry services. On the other hand, Frances herself, in a June, 1861, letter to her brother Joel (quoted more fully below), says that she "first met him at Uncle's a year ago." The uncle lived not far from William's parents in Northfield. However and whenever they met, Frances, who was eight years William's junior, would eventually become his wife.

As an itinerant schoolteacher William could not hope to support a wife — especially one who had been raised as the daughter of a New Hampshire doctor — so he came to think that he should move west to make his fortune. He went to Elk Grove, Illinois, where he was befriended by Peter Bradley, a former neighbor from Northfield, and acquired some land. Elk Grove was just west of what is now Chicago's O'Hare International Airport. After a short time there he served again as a schoolteacher, but, still thinking of marrying, he was not content. On June 1, 1856, the twenty-four-year-old young man in Elk Grove wrote to his younger sister Josephine (whom he sometimes referred to as "Josie" or "Feny") about what he hoped to find in a wife. It was a traditional, sexist, and self-centered set of expectations:

As for riches, I do not care whether she has any or not. Indeed I would prefer she had none. As for beauty, although I confess that I am an admirer of beauty, I would not bevery particular whether she had a pretty face or not. I would want something more than this. Yes, agreat deal more. I should want her to have a true woman's heart. I should want her to have a heart that could sympathize with me in the every day sorrows and joys of life. I should want her to possess a quiet, womanly dignity, which would prevent an improper word's being spoken in her presence. I should want her to be as free from coquetry as the noonday sun from clouds.

I should wish her to be one who would despise those petty artifices that come under the head of "catching a beau," and which every man that is worth catching sees through. I should want one who had a wealth of love for me, and me alone. I should also want her to understand domestic concerns, who could make home comfortable, pleasant and happy.

Now love is a good thing, a beautiful thing, but poor dinners and an unpleasant home soon drive it away. In short, I should want her to possess

A woman's heart, a woman's mind,

A woman's tears for words unkind,

Withall a love that could equal mine

To share my cares whenere they came,

And a woman's hand to soothe my pain.

William was increasingly aware that in his present economic situation he could have no hope of supporting such a wife, or any wife for that matter.

Pioneering

In the spring of 1857 William decided to try to make his fortune by heading still farther west with a schoolteacher friend named Henry Brown. William had borrowed $300 from Brown's father, Reverend Hoke Brown, for the venture. He and Henry each filed claims on quarter sections (160 acres) of government land some twenty miles west of Minneapolis. Far from being the huge metropolis it is now, Minneapolis was little more than a village. It had just been incorporated the year before (1856).

Pioneering was rough going, however. Soon William's friend Henry Brown gave up and went back to Illinois. William stayed longer. From timber cut on his claim, he built, with the help of some pioneer neighbors, a log cabin and cleared enough land to plant some corn. When he needed supplies he took a load of cord wood to exchange for groceries in Minneapolis. He later told of seeing bands of Sioux and Winnebago Indians roaming through "his" land. Respecting the authority of the garrison at nearby Fort Snelling, the Indians rarely bothered the white settlers, though they disputed with each other. When asked much later, long after the war, how he managed to commit so much Shakespeare to memory, William told the story of that long and lonely winter in Minnesota. He had with him only one book besides his Bible — an edition of the plays of Shakespeare.

After wintering in his lonely log cabin, William decided that he needed to earn some money to supplement the meager output of his farm. He hired out to a bridge-builder farther to the north. His job was to saw lumber for the bridges. When his employer went bankrupt, William and his fellow workers found themselves with no money, stranded up the Mississippi River a hundred miles north of Minneapolis. Desperate, they built themselves a raft and floated home, escaping near death in some rapids.

Pioneering was not easy for William. On June 20, 1858, he wrote to his youngest sister Hortense ("Hortie"), back in New Hampshire, about his life. By a "block house," William referred not to the defensive corner structure of a fort, but to a log home made of squared logs. By "opening" he referred to a clearing in the woods for farm land. The money he spoke of going to town to try to collect was apparently money owed him by the bankrupt bridge-builder:

I am very comfortably seated in an armchair before a table on which is piled a quantity of washed and ironed clothes. Said table being in the second block house here in the "big woods" of Minnesota. The window before me looks out upon an opening of ten or twelve acres planted to wheat, corn and potatoes. Around this "opening" upon all sides, stands the dense forest as it has stood for centuries. So much for my surrounding. It might be considered by some as a pleasantly novel situation, but it is neither novel nor particularly pleasant to me, at present.

A few days since I went to town to try to collect some money that was due to me. I could collect nothing, and when I returned I found that the Pigeons had entirely destroyed my corn.

I can get no employment here at present, owing to the miserably dull times, so I do not know but I shall give up my idea of clearing up a part of my farm and renting it, but leave it at present and go down to Illinois and work thru harvesting and perhaps take a school in the fall.

Hortie never received William's letter because she died of typhoid fever on June 23, 1858, while the letter was en route to her. When he heard from his brother Benson of her death, William, full of disappointment and grief, quickly settled his business in Minneapolis and took steamer passage back to Illinois. His plan was to sell his property in Illinois, then go home to Northfield. He wrote to Benson on July 9, 1858:

Oh, Benson, I cannot tell you how badly I feel. I was expecting a letter from Hortie in answer to one I had written her, when I received yours. [...]

If I can dispose of my land in Illinois as I am in hopes of doing, I shall go immediately home and try to make Father and Mother as comfortable as possible so that they may feel less her loss. I have no desire to remain in the west now. One of my principal objects in staying here was to try and acquire a little property so that I could give Hortie an education. [...]

If I do not dispose of my land I may stop a few months in Illinois before going home.

William signed his land claim in Minnesota over to Hoke Brown, the man who had given him the initial $300 loan for the pioneering venture, but his departure from the Chicago area was delayed by his taking a job as a farm hand at Guilford, Illinois, for the harvest season. That fall he taught at a Guilford school. On November 22, 1858, he wrote to his sister Josephine:

I have a school here of about forty scholars. Among them are eight or ten young ladies, very good scholars, though wild and rude as school girls usually are. I shall try to deserve and obtain the love and respect of all my pupils.

I feel better (in mind) since I commenced school than I have for a year before. I feel now as if I were accomplishing something.

Courting

William eventually did return to New Hampshire. During his sojourn at home he wrote no letters — at least none that have survived — since he was already among his usual correspondents. The epistolary record picks up again only when he returned to Illinois. It seems, though, that while in Northfield he spent some time in the company of a young woman named Abbie Clough. Then, not long before he left for Illinois, he discovered that Frances "Fannie" A. Morrill had broken off from her fiancé, a man named Richard. Before he left to return to Illinois, William paid several visits to her.

That spring of 1861 William's relationship with Fannie got serious very quickly and he asked her mother for permission to become Fannie's suitor. Fannie's mother granted it. William wrote to Fannie from Northfield on March 12, 1861, just as he was leaving for Illinois:

It is with a great deal of pleasure, my dear Fannie, that I seat myself to talk to you by means of that very useful little article, the pen, which though small and insignificant, is nevertheless said to be mightier than the sword. I suspect that its might depends altogether on him who wields it, and unluckily for me, writing (as Artemus Ward says) isn't my forte.

Still I can manage, perhaps, to put some of my thoughts on paper, though they may not be clothed in that happy language which the talented Editress of the "Scholar's Wreath" so well knows how to use. And in doing this I shall by no means make use of Talleyrand's famous definition of language as a "medium to conceal our thoughts." On the contrary I shall endeavor to let my language express my thoughts.

I have thought often and much of you since I last saw you. The memory of that visit will long remain with me. From it I shall date a new era in my heart's history. New hopes and new aspirations were then awakened which I cannot but think will modify to some extent the whole current of my life.

Your kindness, the few words of encouragement you gave, I shall take with me as a talisman to ward off all unkind blows while doing service in "Life's broad field of battle."

I feel that your Mother was very kind to me, a comparative stranger. She treated me with all the respect and confidence I could reasonably expect. I shall try to prove myself worthy of her entire confidence.

William did not finish the letter to Fannie until March 18, when he was in Lowell, Massachusetts, farther en route to Illinois. The brother-in-law he refers to is apparently the man who married his older sister, Eliza:

I wrote the above thinking to send it to you before I left home. I did not get ready to start west as soon as I expected, but am now on my way. I left home this morning and am now with my brother-in-law at Lowell where I shall remain tonight and start for Chicago in the morning.

I hope, dear Fannie, the iron horse will bear me safely to journey's end, but should this be my last letter, I should feel that I had omitted a duty did I not entreat you in all earnestness to seek an interest in Christ. I have found the Saviour very precious to me, and though I confess with shame that I have not always acted as one who professes to be a follower of Christ, still I would not give up my faith for worlds.

I shall send you with this letter my picture. It is not a very good one, there is an odd expression about it that I do not like and the eyes arevery badly executed. I had no time to have a better one taken so I must send you this. May I not hope to hear from you very soon?

Fortunately, Fannie kept William's letters. That letter he wrote en route — especially in its first three paragraphs — demonstrates the nervously self-conscious work of a man who wants to show off his learning through literary allusions. The reference to the comparative might of pen and sword alluded to an 1839 play, Richelieu (Act II, Scene 2), by Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1803–1873). Artemus Ward was the pen name of Charles Farrar Browne (1834–1867), a popular American writer of humor, born in Maine, who was said to be the favorite author of Abraham Lincoln. The "Editress" William refers to is Josephine Kingsley Hardy (d. 1871), who studied at the seminary in Northfield, New Hampshire, and later at the Mount Holyoke Female Seminary. Her "Scholar's Wreath" is a collection of her own writings and those of others on such topics as immigration, slavery, the seasons, gems, and employment. Talleyrand is the usual name for Frenchman Charles Maurice de Talleyrand (1754–1838), who sided with the French revolutionists and became an important diplomat under Napoleon. He is known for his witty and cynical statements. The quip about language that William quotes is more properly translated as "Speech was given to man to disguise his thoughts." In the fifth paragraph, the reference to "Life's broad field of battle" is a slight misquotation from "A Psalm of Life" (first published 1838), by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882). The fifth stanza reads:

In the world's broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!

William seems unwilling to refer to the locomotive by its common name, so he calls it an "iron horse." His pious exhortation to Fannie to "seek an interest in Christ" rings somewhat hollow, or at least formulaically humble, from the pen of a brash young adventurer. All in all, the belabored and artificial letter seems designed more to impress Fannie's mother than to win the heart of Fannie herself. Stylistically, it stands in sharp contrast with the less self-conscious letters that he was soon to write from the field.

(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "Army of the Potomac"
by .
Copyright © 2013 Peter G. Beidler.
Excerpted by permission of Coffeetown Enterprises, Inc.
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Table of Contents

Map Showing Locations Mentioned in the Letters,
Acknowledgments,
A Note on the Letters,
Preface,
William Cross Hazelton Before the War,
Growing, Learning, Teaching,
Pioneering,
Courting,
William Cross Hazelton During the War,
Preparing for Action: Illinois,
Waiting for Action: Alexandria,
Peninsular Campaign: Williamsburg and Richmond,
Maryland campaign: Antietam,
Back in Virginia: Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville,
Through Maryland to Pennsylvania: Gettysburg,
Into Virginia Once More: Defending Washington,
Reenlistment, Marriage, Horses: Pittsburgh,
Surrender, Assassination, Manhunt: Washington,
"The Captain" After the War,
Appendix: Military and Other Terms,
Sources,