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Preferred Citation

Forty-Sixth Pennsylvania Regiment Clothing Allowance Book and Letters of John F. Moore, 1861-1867, Accession #10733, Special Collections Dept., University of Virginia Library, Charlottesville, Va.

Acquisition Information

This collection was purchased from Beltrone & Company of Keswick, Virginia, on November 11, 1987.

Biographical/Historical Information

The Forty-sixth Pennsylvania was organized at Harrisburg on October 31, 1861. Members of Company K appear to have enlisted mainly at Shamokin and other Pennsylvania areas (New Brighton, Allegheny, Greensburg, Pittsburg), and Decherd, Tennessee. During the period covered by the entries in this volume, November 1861 to December 1863, the company was stationed at Virginia locales including Winchester and the Shenandoah Valley. The company took part in various battles, campaigns, and skirmishes at Gordonsville, Warrenton, Culpeper, Cedar Mountain, Chancellorsville and elsewhere. It also fought at Antietam and Gettysburg before it finally departed from Virginia for Alabama on November 5, 1863.

Scope and Content Information

The collection is comprised of nine items in two groups of unrelated materials. The first is a clothing allowance book for Company K, Forty-sixth Pennsylvania Infantry, First Division, II from 1862 to 1863. The second consists of eight letters of Baltimore resident John F. Moore, 1861 & 1864-1867.

Most of the approximately 360 men listed in the volume held the rank of private followed by that of corporal and sergeant; generally, these soldiers were able to sign their own names for their accounts. The signatures were witnessed by Lieutenant W. P. Caldwell or Captain (later Major) Cyrus Strouse. Additional information on the regiment may be found in Frederick H. Dyer's A Compendium of the War of the Rebellion , volume three; C. E. Dornbush's Regimental Publications . . . . , volume one, part four; and, The North Carolina Historical Review XXXII (1955), pages 385-409 and 544-572. These published sources are available in Alderman Library.

John F. Moore's letters are addressed to his parents, Dr. and Mrs. T. M. Moore of Aberdeen, Ohio. On February 23, 1864, Moore writes an extended communique from Washington's National Hotel to describe his visit to the city. In his opinion the city was crowed with people, conveyances, and military officers. He joined "thousands of visitors" at the Capitol where he met his "Uncle Ben" and Kentucky Congressman William Henry Wadsworth (1821-1893) and Robert Mallory (1815-1885); his uncle also introduced him to Ohio Representative Samuel Sullivan Cox (1824-1889). According to Moore there was a long-running disagreement involving Wadsworth and Mallory aligned against Congressman and former general Green Clay Smith (1826-1895). He called on Smith and his wife at the Washington House but found him sick in bed yet well enough to express his dislike of Mallory.

Moore seems to have had difficulty in deciding upon a career, and these letters indicate his family's and his own dissatisfaction with his vocation (June 18 & 22, 1864; March 1, 1865 and March 16, 1867) as a clerk in the commission firm of Mitchell Oliver and Company. He urges his father to speculate in gold futures (June 22, 1864) and mentions relatives' plans to visit the 1864 Democratic National Convention in Chicago (July 24, 1864). [The convention was held August 29-31 and nominated General George McClellan for President.] Also present is an undated letter from "John" (John F. Moore?) with the heading "In Camp at Maysville (Kentucky?)" which implies that he had enlisted for military duty at some point during the Civil War.