150 Voices for 150 Years: An Autobiography of Us From Furman Universitys digital collections comes a letter from Charles M. Furman, Jr. to his beloved wife Frances. Furman served as captain of Company A, 16th South Carolina. He seems especially concerned with his wifes silence and repeatedly asks about her health - scroll to the end to find out why! In lines Atlanta Geo Aug 21st 1864 My dearest Wife The mails are still to me absolutely barren of news from home. Both yourself and all others at Greenville leave me in entire ignorance of your condition. I do not know what to think of this silence it is true that the mails have been interrupted by Mr Sherman’s officious interference but this does not satisfactorily account for my failure in getting letters from home. For I know that letters have come from Greenville of comparatively a recent date. I hear of one of the 12th inst. - your last was of the 29th ult – more than three weeks back. I have received from you letters of the 14th, 19th, 22nd & 29th [?]; you can tell whether I have received all that you have written. How many letters I have dispatched within that time I can not say. Perhaps 12 or 15 within a month past. I do not know what I can do to hear soon; if you are sick now, do ask Dora to write to me your silence since you wrote from Columbia is doubly calculated to excite anxiety as you were about taking your departure for Greenville and I do not know but that you may have suffered from the fatigue. I have little to report beyond the usual shelling skirmishes and maneuvering. Today the Sabbath is comparatively quiet. I do not know but that the enemy as a general thing are of late to some degree observant of the day. It is certainly a desirable respite from whatever cause it springs. They have just made another raid cutting the West Point & Macon roads. We have demolished the party however at least in good measure, if reports are true. I suppose if old Sherman makes a few more such unsuccessful forays over the border he will be so much reduced in the cavalry and of the service as to be compelled to give up the system of raiding so favorite a feature in Yankee campaigning. I hear that Tunnel Hill is blown up and the track between the Etowah and Oostanaula torn up to a considerable extent - how long we can succeed in interrupting the enemy’s supplies by holding the road time will show. I hardly hope that we can compel [sic] him to fall back. If raids and assaults play out with the army under the illustrious John B. Sherman he may be in as undesirable a predicament as Lieut Genl Grant - the intended annihilator of the army of Northern Virginia, or even in a worse condition for his base is much more exposed to attack than Grants. We had two men killed day before yesterday in our Regt one on picket - one behind the works - one of two were wounded, perhaps ten or twelve were hurt in the Brigade. Yesterday one of my company was wounded just in rear of the trenches - this is the first man I have lost since the affair of the 22nd my company has been the only one which has lost so lightly. I left Dalton with 52 men, 12 have deserted or fallen into the hands of the enemy, 14 have been killed and wounded only one of whom has returned to camp. I have received 4 recruits and now have but 22 men present. Four men who were engaged in a part of the campaign have died of disease. I heard Maj Crook of Vaughan’s Brigade say that his command left Dalton with between 1100 and 1200 men and had lost up to that time 760 men. These are the figures as well as I can remember; it may be the original number was 1200 or 1300. Pretty heavy loss was it not. The Division has been recruited and the Brigade now numbers between 600 & 700 men effective for action. The loss in our Regt in killed & wounded is I think between 200 & 250. We have I suppose some thing like 300 men effective for action present with the Regt having received say 60 recruits from the Conscript Bureau and a number of men on detached duty having joined the command by order from Army Hd Qrs. I will be more occupied for the future, as I have been appointed a member of the Examining Board for Gist’s Brigade, and I am afraid will have my hands full as recorder of the same. There are a number of newly elected men to come before us at once this campaign having made a considerable deduction from the roll of our officers or vacancies having accrued at some former period. Today is Sunday, how I wish I could spend a portion of it in the house of God. Our Chaplains are I suppose somewhere in the rear. They may be useful perhaps necessary at the hospitals; but I do not know that they discharge their duty to the Regts. I do not think that I have seen our chaplain for more than three weeks, and then only for a moment. It is more than a month since I have heard a sermon preached. When the bullets are whistling about our ears. These gentlemen are generally in the rear. I do not know what [unable to read, possibly marked through] But I will close. Give my love to all the family, tell me how Davis & Kaidy look, tell them that brother Charlie will try and come to see them before Christmass [sic]. Tell Dora that I am much obliged to her for the haversack and that the hdkfs. [handkerchiefs] etc are not suited for the ditches & I do not wish them sent indeed I do not wish anything in the way of clothing, as I now have more than I can keep clean and fully as many as I wish to carry. Tell them that a box of eatables would be acceptable however as we get light rations of corn-meal, & beef our bacon ration is pretty fair. Biscuits or anything made from wheat flour are a rarity. I would like to have some molasses, flour, a ham, some dried pork, onions & peppers. The weather is so warm and it is so uncertain how long the box may be on the road that it would be useless to send any thing that will readily spoil. I think it was more than three months from the time your box was sent off up to that of its arrival. And now my beautiful, my beloved bride let me charge you to be careful of your health. This is particularly necessary as you expect so soon to be a mamma. I wanted you to tell me so yourself. Especially as you took me so much by surprise the idea of a young matron having a baby without letting her absent husband know anything about it - it is true that “something which might induce me to write oftener but which you yet could not tell me” was a pretty good hint. Still I wanted you to tell me of it as a darling little wife would tell her loved & loving Husband. And as I would have made you tell me if this cruel war had not separated us Yours C Its not surprising that Frances wouldnt write or speak openly of her pregnancy, even to her husband, as that went against the strict etiquette codes of the time. The Furmans first daughter, Constance Theodora, was born on November 4 and lived to be 96 years old. #150VoicesofUs #HashtagHistory
Posted on: Thu, 21 Aug 2014 10:00:00 +0000
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