McSpadden - A Leaf of Voices Stories of the American Civil War in the Words of Those Who Lived and Died, 1861-65

In early 2008 I had been working as a volunteer at the Wabash County Historical Museum in Wabash, Indiana, for several months. That spring it came to light that there was no memorial listing all those from the county who had given their lives in the Civil War. The only memorial was a stone column at Center Grove Cemetery, near the Huntington County line A memorial to the Unreturned Soldiers of this vicinity in the War for the Union 186165 By Comrades and Friends. The forty men named were from Wabash and Huntington Counties.

It became my project to research every possible source to trace names of those who had died in the war and to compile a comprehensive list in order to establish a memorial to them. The museum has a We Honor Wall that listed the countys dead from the Mexican War to current conflicts, but no names for the Civil War.

On Veterans Day 2010, the museum unveiled an updated We Honor Wall that now includes the names of 380 who gave their lives from 1861 to 1865. That number was more than for all other wars combined. Although it may seem an unusually high number, the U.S. Census of Wabash County showed a population of 17,547 in 1860, so the fatality rate of approximately 2 percent was in line with nationwide figures.

In addition to military records such as the multivolume Report of the Adjutant-General of the State of Indiana by W. H. H. Terrell, much of the information about those who died could be found in the local newspapers of the time and other archival materials in the museum. The newspapers became vital in my research. Obituaries, letters, and news items filled in some of the gaps left in the military records.

Many of the soldiers, with time on their hands between battles and marches, wrote their thoughts in letters home to relatives, friends, and often directly to the newspapers. The letters came from men of all walks of life and give fascinating details about their everyday routines and their opinions about the monstrous rebellion. The more I read these letters the more I realized how important they are in not only giving eyewitness accounts of battles, but also for giving us glimpses into the soldiers innermost thoughts.

In order to maintain the original tone of the letters, I have not changed the spelling or language as originally published. During that time the language and spelling was still somewhat flexible; many people even used different versions of their own names. Some words are now archaic or have altered meanings. For example, the word recruit was sometimes used to mean recover, as in He was sent home to recruit his health.

I have also kept the words and phrases used by the soldiers to describe the slave population they encountered. Words we would consider unsuitable or unacceptable in our modern world were not used then to be insulting or derogatory. The Northern soldiers did not always know how best to describe the former slaves, but the contexts were always sympathetic whatever the terms used.