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We know something of the grand scale of the Civil War—the battles, the generals, the various factors that led to the conflict—but we know much less about how it affected the people who actually lived through it and fought in it. The Civil War Letters of Joseph Hopkins Twichell thus provides us with an invaluable resource, weaving the mundane and extraordinary events of the war into a seamless narrative that allows us to view the war as it really was, at least through the eyes of one rather remarkable man. His attention to detail, human sympathies, and religious sensibilities make him a trusty observer of a conflict that forever changed the course of American history. Moreover, his convictions hearken back to a time in American history when evangelical faith, moral reform, and social justice were allies rather than enemies.
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Joseph Hopkins Twichell (1838-1918), the son of a tanner, was born and raised in New England. After graduating from Yale, Twichell enrolled in Union Theological Seminary in New York to prepare for the ministry. But his abolitionist sympathies drove him to volunteer as a chaplain in the Excelsior Brigade of Lower Manhattan, a unit mostly made up of Irish Catholics. From 1861 to 1864 Twichell served as chaplain of the brigade, which saw action in several major Civil War battles, including Fredericksburg, Gettysburg, and Cold Harbor. After his tour of duty Twichell returned to New England, married Julia Harmony Cushman, with whom he had nine children, and completed his ministerial training at Andover Seminary.
Twichell then served as pastor of Asylum Hill Congregational Church for 47 years. The church grew steadily under his leadership and started many outreach programs to Hartford's needy. But Twichell's interests were not confined to church ministry alone. He enjoyed a deep friendship with the élite of New England, including the writer Mark Twain and the composer Charles Ives, who married his daughter Harmony. He became involved in the Chinese Educational Mission, the Hartford Evening Club, Nook Farm, the Republican Party, and the Yale Alumni Association.
Alas, Twichell has been largely lost to our historical memory. This publication might help change that. He wrote hundreds of letters during the war, mostly to his father but also, especially after his father's death in 1863, to his mother, siblings, and a few friends. The book includes about a third of his letters, a short biography of Twichell, occasional commentary, notes to identify obscure references, maps, photos, drawings, and bibliography. The editors provide necessary information without becoming obtrusive; they let the letters speak for themselves.
Early on, Twichell's primary duty was to organize religious services for "his boys," as he liked to call them. But as the war progressed he found it nearly impossible to perform traditional religious duties and thus had to find other ways to make himself useful. He assisted medics in performing amputations and other surgeries, comforted soldiers who were about to die, wrote letters to their families back home, secured couriers to get their meager pay to the bank, and helped to bury the dead.
His letters provide an unvarnished account of the war as soldiers and civilians experienced it. For example, he frequently comments about the impact of weather and other natural phenomena, which so often affected the movement of troops and the outcome of battles. (He likens bad weather—rain and mud, cold and wind, drought and dust—to the plagues of Egypt.) His attention to detail makes his account of historic battles ghastly and wrenching. He describes the suffering of individual soldiers, the stench of death, the cries of the wounded, all the while adding the human element that every person fighting in the Civil War felt—the longing for home. "I have been up to my elbows in blood all day, and it is a relief now just at night to turn for a few minutes homeward, where there is peace and happiness." He comments after coming upon Confederates who had died in battle, "They lay in heaps almost—a half dozen together. Wounds of every description were open to view, some horribly disfiguring … . I saw one handsome fellow, with a beardless face and a hand small and delicate as a girl's. I took hold of it and even in death it felt smooth and soft."
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