Administrative Information

Access Restrictions

There are no restrictions.

Use Restrictions

See the University of Virginia Library’s use policy.

Preferred Citation

Papers regarding the Civil War, 1863-1865, Accession # 10765, Special Collections Dept., University of Virginia Library, Charlottesville, Va.

Acquisition Information

These items were purchased from John L. Heflin, Jr. of Brentwood, Tennessee, on June 22, 1988.

Scope and Content Information

This collection consists of four items, 1863-1865, two printed Confederate General Orders issued by General Samuel Cooper, Adjutant and Inspector General's Office, Richmond, Virginia, and two letters from Union soldiers to their families.

General Orders Number 33, March 26, 1863, is comprised of five paragraphs. The first concerns the organization of the ordnance officer's corps and the second announces that all officers assigned to ordnance duty but not to the corps itself will eventually be relived by appointed corps officers. The third paragraph orders officers in charge of arsenals and depots to submit monthly reports "to prevent fraudulent claims" by men who have relinquished their soldier's pay and are detailed at those facilities as full-time employees. The fourth paragraph orders officers commanding military departments to require their provost marshals and prison commandants to report monthly on those persons held in confinement other than soldiers. The fifth paragraph amends General Orders Number 31 and pertains to officers' commutation value of their transportation while on furlough.

General Orders Number 72, June 1, 1863, pertain to the court marital of Captain Williams S. Rowan, Company A (Beirne Sharpshooters), 60th Virginia Infantry, held on May 5, 1863 at Gray Sulphur Springs, Virginia. He had been found guilty and ordered to be dismissed from Confederate service but his case was reviewed by the Secretary of War [James A. Seddon] who ordered him restored to duty. (Rowan was later promoted to the rank of major in 1864.)

The first of the letters, September 17, 1864, is from Private George N. Aumiller, Company A, 208th Pennsylvania Volunteers (Army of the James), to his mother and sister, Catherine, of Dalmatia, Northumberland County, Pennsylvania. Aumiller, writing from Bermuda Hundred, Virginia, discusses his regiment's journey from Harrisonburg to Baltimore where it was transferred to a steamboat for the remainder of the trip (thirty-six hours); he and several of his comrades became seasick. Places mentioned along the way include Fort Monroe, Harrison's Landing, the James River, Bermuda Hundred and "Citicens Point" (City Point). According to Samuel Bates' History of Pennsylvania Volunteers, Volume V, page 695, Aumiller had enlisted on August 26, 1864 and was mustered out with his company on June 1, 1865.

The second letter, January 1, 1865, is from Private A. S. Miller, Company C, 7th Regiment, Veterans Reserve Corps (First Battalion), to his wife. Miller, writing from the Rush Barracks in Washington, D. C., wishes her a Merry Christmas and hopes the war will end soon. Tired of being away from her and suffering from "the blues", he complains about officers "putting on airs", the strictness of regulations, and that he has no money to send her. He also remarks that his unit had been marched to a hospital where it was served Christmas dinner but anticipates that he will soon be in the guardhouse as military life is too burdensome. (Miller's regiment was organized on October 10, 1863; the Veterans Reserve Corps, formerly the Invalid Corps until March 1864, was comprised of two battalions. First Battalion men were convalescents fit enough to guard prisoners, buildings, etc.; Second Battalion men had suffered injures so severe as to confine them to desk work.)