(Mecklenburg County, North Carolina): 1864-65.
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Unbound. A collection of 23 letters, including four with original envelopes, written to Pvt. Thomas M. Carr when he was serving with the 2nd Battalion, Co. B, North Carolina Junior Reserves. The archive includes nine detailed letters from his father, together with 12 letters from cousins, and two letters from his Uncle Kerr, spanning the period from May 1864 through March 1865. Most of the letters were sent from Carr’s family home at Martindale, located just north of Raleigh in Mecklenburg County. The envelopes (lacking stamps) are addressed to Carr at Weldon, North Carolina. Four letters are fragile with scattered tiny chips and holes from ink gall deterioration to the paper, else very good overall.
The 2nd Regiment Junior Reserves (also known as the 71st Regiment) was formed in December 1864 and surrendered on April 26, 1865. Carr was 17 years old when he joined, serving in Company B, commanded by Captain William H. Overman. Confederate officials did not intend for the Reserves to fight, nor were they supposed to leave the state where they were recruited. However, as indicated in several of the letters, this rule was suspended near the end of 1864 as things grew ever more desperate for the Confederacy, especially during the siege of Petersburgh and Richmond.
In a letter from November, 1864 Carr’s father responds to: “a report here that all you boys has volunteered to go to Petersburgh or Richmond and now I want to know if such is the fact. I wrote to you not to volunteer, & … for George not to either, but that letter I see by you as you did not receive … .” Although it is not clear whether or not Carr actually volunteered in November, a December 11, 1864 letter from Carr’s uncle confirms that by then his regiment had been ordered to leave the state (the Junior Reserves went to Virginia at this time):
“Dear Nephew … I am sorry to learn that you have [to] go out of the state but you will have to go where ever your country calls you. I expect the Legislature will pass an act that will take me as I see it recommended by Gov. Vance to take all up to fifty-five and will take me … .”
The letters from Carr’s father and cousins also contain several references to Sherman’s March and battles taking place in North Carolina, in particular at Wilmington during the final months of the war, where the Junior Reserves saw combat. In Thomas Carr’s last letter to his son (January 2, 1865), he provides an early contemporary account of General Sherman’s “Christmas Gift” to President Lincoln:
“… I know that there is going to be hard fighting in the Eastern part of this state before long. Lee’s Army will be obliged to fall back to this state ere long & North Carolina & South Carolina will be the seat of war & it will not last much longer from reports. Hood has lost his whole army in Tennessee. Sherman has got Savannah, Ga & 33000 bags of cotton … 150 canon, 18 engines & about 200 cars. This he presents to old Abe as a Christmas gift. He will doubtless in my opinion turn for Branchville & Columbia, SC. If so he will be to Charlotte in a month or so – we have no secesh now. I believe the last man of them now say that the confederacy is done … I suppose that your Co. is at Wilmington … I want you to try your very best to get a furlow. If not I want you to try and stay with the wagon so that you may be as safe as possible … .”
A fascinating and historically important collection of letters. A complete list of all 23 letters is available, with quoted extracts.
Item #429580
