What were a woman’s most important qualities in the 1860s, in the eyes of a Union soldier? Edwin Lybarger, an officer in the 43rd Ohio Volunteer Infantry, received letters from a dozen Northern women between 1862 and the end of the war in 1865.
These letters are published in WANTED–CORRESPONDENCE: Letters to a Union Soldier.
In August of 1863, Edwin advertised in the newspaper for a correspondent of the Fair Sex for “agreeable, interesting and useful correspondence.”
He received a reply from a young lady signing herself “Fannie Jerome.” After they had exchanged several letters, “Fannie” revealed her real name to be Lou Riggen.
They continued to correspond for the duration of the war. Their plan to meet on his way home to Ohio in the summer of 1865 appears not to have been accomplished. Their correspondence ceased only after his 1867 marriage to a hometown girl.
Do you like music?
Play on the piano?
Can you bake bread?
Can you bake mince pies?
Make good coffee?
Keep house?
Can you eat your share of a dinner?
Do you like History, Poetry, or Novels best?
What church to you belong to?
On Sept. 29, 1864, she answered his letter:
Keep house? I once kept house for six months to the edification of the whole family except Lou Riggen. My! what an endless task of intricate labor. Brooms, carpets, beds, cobwebs, dinners, suppers, breakfasts, with all their attendant auxiliaries of good butter, sweet milk, done bread & not burnt either. ‘To be or not to be’ good was always the dread question until dinner stood in all its dread array on the table. Sometimes it was and sometimes it wasn’t.
Edwin was also impressed by a woman he met in Memphis, Tennessee who chewed tobacco. In more than one of his wartime diary entries, he seems to have been most impressed by women of wit and intelligence who could entertain by performing music, who didn’t talk all the time, and who shared his Union loyalties.
Union soldiers advertised for female correspondents, but even more daring were the young ladies at home who advertised for soldiers to write to them. Some or all of the signatures might be false names on this newspaper solicitation during the war:
The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there. –L. P. Hartley (1895-1972)
How people did and didn’t express their feelings is a great research guide.
