Collections

This collection is made up of letters that Christopher H. Keller of the 124th Illinois Infantry Regiment and Albert C. Cleavland of the 42nd Illinois Infantry Regiment wrote to the Keller family and to Caroline M. Hall during the Civil War. The soldiers described their experiences in the South, including engagements with Confederate troops and guerillas, interactions with local civilians, travel between posts, and life in military camps. They occasionally discussed their feelings about the war and about political issues such as the presidential election of 1864.

This collection is made up of letters written that Christopher H. Keller of the 124th Illinois Infantry Regiment and Albert C. Cleavland of the 42nd Illinois Infantry Regiment wrote to the Keller family and to Caroline M. Hall during the Civil War. The soldiers discussed their experiences in the South throughout the war.

The bulk of the collection is letters that Christopher H. Keller wrote to his parents, George H. and Esther Keller of Batavia, Illinois, and to his future wife, Caroline Matilda Hall of St. Charles, Illinois, between September 2, 1862, and August 14, 1865. He described his travels between camps and other posts in Illinois, Tennessee, Mississippi, and Louisiana, commenting on the weather, the scenery, and destruction caused by the war. His letters provide detailed descriptions of everyday aspects of military life, such as camp conditions, rations and supplies, religious services, and medical care; in February 1863, he described his stay at Overton Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee. Keller occasionally expressed his opinions on military doctors, conscripted soldiers, and the war, and reflected on soldiers' deaths. He sometimes shared stories about his interactions with Confederate civilians.

Keller participated in skirmishes throughout his service. Two groups of letters concern his experiences during the Siege of Vicksburg in mid-1863 and the Union campaign for Mobile in the spring of 1865. In March 1865, he visited New Orleans. In 1864, he briefly commented on Abraham Lincoln's presidential nomination and noted his regiment's overwhelming support for Lincoln as they voted; in 1865, he reacted to news of Lincoln's assassination and the death of John Wilkes Booth. Keller's final letters, written from Mobile just after the end of the war, include mentions of freed Confederate prisoners and freedmen. Keller's enclosed a dogwood blossom in his letter of April 10, 1865.

A small number of items in the collection are incoming letters to Christopher H. Keller and, to a lesser extent, Caroline M. Hall. Keller received one letter from Albert N. Hall about Hall's experiences at Pittsburg, Tennessee (March 25, 1862). Albert C. Cleavland wrote letters about his service with the 42nd Illinois Infantry Regiment from 1861-1865. He served in Tennessee, Alabama, and Georgia, and his letters include descriptions of skirmishes near Chattanooga, Tennessee, in October 1863, the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain, and a visit to Atlanta after its destruction by Union troops. His later letters sometimes include comments about Confederate civilians, the fall of Richmond, and the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Cleavland wrote his final letters from Port Lavaca, Texas, in late 1865. The final item in the collection is a letter that Mary Chind of St. Charles, Illinois, wrote to Caroline Hall Keller on December 31, 1865, congratulating Keller on her marriage and enclosing a pamphlet by Theodore L. Cuyler, "A Flaw in the Wedding Link."

The collection includes undated newspaper clippings from the Montgomery Daily Mail and an unknown paper, pertaining to troop movements and the restoration of telegraph services, respectively, and a tintype portrait of an unidentified Union soldier in uniform, posing beside a United States flag.

The Henry Grimes Marshall papers consist of letters written by Marshall to his family while serving with the Union Army, including time spent as an officer in the 29th Connecticut Infantry Regiment (Colored). Marshall's letters describe the events taking place around him as well as his thoughts about African American regiments, women's roles in war, and his reactions to the war.

Henry Marshall is among those writers whose letters provide insight into the workings of the mind, but also the workings of the heart. As a result, his surviving correspondence ranks among the outstanding collections in the Schoff Civil War Collections, providing a sensitive and deeply introspective view into the experience of a white officer in a "colored" regiment. An exquisite writer, Marshall was also among the most punctual of correspondents, rarely allowing a week to pass without sending something to his family at home. As a result of this fidelity and his meticulous eye for detail, it is possible to reconstruct nearly every day of Marshall's life under arms, the swings in his emotions, and the sudden changes in fortune that marked his career.

The high point of the collection is a remarkable series of letters written while Marshall was captain of Co. E, 29th Connecticut Infantry (Colored). Unlike the vast majority of white Americans, Marshall saw African-Americans as capable soldiers, brave and willing, and though afflicted with an unrelenting paternalism and sense of his own racial superiority, he generally refrained from swinging to the romantic extremes of many white abolitionists or the vicious extremes of his more racist compatriots. Marshall provides good accounts of daily life in camp, the inevitable rumors circulating among the soldiers, and opinions of officers. Of particular value are the ruminations on African American troops and their officers, living conditions while on duty guarding plantations in South Carolina or in the trenches before Petersburg, and the heavy labor while working at construction of the Dutch Gap Canal.

Among the military engagements described by Marshall are Fredericksburg, the sieges of Suffolk and Petersburg (particularly the battles of New Market, Darbytown Road and the Darbytown and New Market Roads), and the capture of Richmond. Furthermore, Marshall was involved in a number of minor skirmishes, many of which are exceptionally well documented. Overall, the best accounts are those for New Market Heights, where African American troops again distinguished themselves, and for a smaller, but significant skirmish during the Petersburg Campaign on October 12 and 13, 1864.

Marshall's letters are made more valuable in that his observational scope extends beyond the military, to report on such things as contraband children's schools (April 30, 1863), "shouts" and religious services (1864 July 5), and the local civilianry. An educated man with a keen interest in botany, he frequently sent home lengthy descriptions of southern flowers, often enclosing samples and seeds, and he left a rare record of the reading material available to a soldier. Marshall was also a keen observer of the religious life in his regiment, writing scathing attacks on his regiment's chaplain, whom Marshall felt was suspect of character.

This collection is primarily made up of typescripts of letters that Dr. James M. Holloway wrote to his wife Anne while serving as a Confederate Army surgeon during the Civil War. Additional materials include typescripts on 19th-century medicine and clippings including full-color illustrations, from The Philadelphia Inquirer (1959-1961).

This collection (0.25 linear feet) is made up of typescripts related to Dr. James M. Holloway's service as a Confederate Army surgeon during the Civil War, typescripts related to 19th-century medicine, and illustrated newspaper clippings related to United States Army uniforms, national coats of arms, and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, during the Civil War.

The bulk of the collection consists of Typescripts, including approximately 121 letters that Holloway wrote to his wife Anne on January 7, 1861, and from July 25, 1861-September 5, 1864. His earliest letters recount his experiences as a surgeon with the 18th Mississippi Infantry Regiment in Virginia, including his treatment of the wounded from the Battle of Ball's Bluff. Holloway, who took pride in his medical career, occasionally described specific patients, including amputees, a woman whose head had become detached from her body, and a dead soldier he dissected. He continued to write about his medical work after being promoted to the command of the hospitals of Richmond, Virginia, in 1862, and also discussed other aspects of his life there, such as the cost of food and other goods. Holloway expressed his devotion to the Confederate cause, and his early letters refer to his commitment to Christianity, which he maintained throughout the remainder of his correspondence. Some of Holloway's letters refer to the movements of Union and Confederate troops in Virginia and the western theater, the possibility of European intervention, specific battles, and the general progress of the war. By the fall of 1864, he feared that Richmond would be cut off from the rest of the Confederacy. In one late letter (written after the Emancipation Proclamation), he advised his wife to sell a female slave.

Holloway wrote 3 letters to his wife in May 1865, expressing his fear that the North would seek retribution from Southerners; he also reported that Beverly Tucker's home had been searched as a result of his suspected connection to the Lincoln assassination. In August and October 1865, Holloway wrote 3 letters to his wife from Louisville, Kentucky, primarily about local churches. Holloway's Civil War correspondence is followed by typescripts of his presidential address to the Tri-State Medical Society (or Mississippi Valley Medical Association) regarding current medical and surgical advancements and the increasing popularity of homeopathy (1882), a partial article about the history of medical education in the South (undated), and an obituary for Samuel Wilcox Warren (January 1878). He wrote 2 additional letters from Amsterdam, Netherlands, and Berlin, Germany, in September 1898, regarding his observations of local hospitals and medical procedures.

The Printed Items series (4 items) contains 3 full-color inserts from issues of The Philadelphia Inquirer, including photographs of toy soldiers wearing historical United States Army uniforms (July 5, 1959); a map of Civil War-era Philadelphia showing the locations of military camps and hospitals (July 5, 1959); a photograph of the coat of arms of the United Kingdom (February 7, 1960); and an editorial commemorating the centennial of the Star of the West incident (January 9, 1961).