Over the course of Ransom Sargent’s years as the Fife Major for the 11^th New Hampshire Regiment, he and Maria wrote endlessly of missing each other, of their repeatedly dashed hopes for a visit home, and of their day-to-day lives while separated. The letters begin only a few days after their parting (a scant three weeks after their wedding), and Ransom already longs to be home, writing: “It is only a week since I saw you last at Concord, but it seems a month to me. If I could have one kiss from your lips instead of kissing your picture, I could put up with all the hardships of a soldier’s life without a murmur. But it is hard to get along without you…”

I’ll admit that at first I gave in to the cynical expectation that this flowery romance was just the honeymoon phase, and eventually the effusive language would fade, or the letters become less frequent. But as I read on, Ransom’s passion never wavered, and more and more I found myself rooting for the two to be happily reunited, even as I devoured every story Ransom told about the Civil War as seen through the eyes of an ordinary foot soldier.

And Ransom’s anecdotes provided a texture to the Civil War I had never imagined. He gives firsthand perspective of some landmark events that were named—but rarely described—in my textbooks, and he seems indifferent to others that I encountered in class as world-shaking moments. No textbook ever gave me a chill the way Ransom’s letter to Maria did, explaining that he was writing her as he sat on a hill watching the Union shell Fredericksburg. Nor could they evoke the haunting quality of his descriptions of walking through the decimated city afterwards, en route to another battle. Ransom’s claim that his regiment has lost more men than the whole south is worth carries the poignant reminder that, since units were organized geographically, those men are his friends and neighbors. I even came to feel attached to some of the other soldiers as Ransom updated Maria on them while she replied with news of their families. In Ransom’s letters, the Battle of Fredericksburg changes from a name on a list of battles to a harrowing tragedy for all involved.  

Conversely, when Maria expresses curiosity about the soldiers’ reaction to Lincoln’s election—and later of his assassination—Ransom replies that it doesn’t much matter who sits in the oval office, since it likely won’t change life in the army camps. What I think of as one of those household-name moments when history was made mattered very little to the daily life of Ransom and his fellow soldiers.

This description of the day-to-day of a Union foot soldier stands in stark contrast to my idea of them as marching stiffly in formation, and always adhering to a strict code of conduct. Ransom’s letters paint a different picture, in which he and his fellow soldiers come to life as regular men, grumbling about the cold and bad food as they trade gossip around the campfire. Ransom even tells stories about breaking rules, like wandering away from the line with a buddy to spend a few nights in a real bed in an abandoned house, before catching up with his regiment a few days later. He trades complaints about camp conditions and the weather with Confederate soldiers camped just across the river (they had, apparently, underestimated the cold in the north and were very put out not to have tents).

But though his letters read almost like a diary—since he writes Maria every few days, he often sends several notes before receiving her response to any given one—it’s clear that Ransom is careful about what he shares with his wife. In one anecdote, he stumbles accidentally into a campsite of Confederate soldiers and, in a moment of panic, takes off running. He notes that, in hindsight, this was a mistake, as they immediately started shooting. Some of the bullets fly so close that he feels the wind of them, and the force of one shell exploding nearby briefly knocks him flat. Though he escapes, he admits to agonizing over whether he should tell Maria and confesses he only does so because he suspects she’ll hear of it anyway when someone else writes home about the incident. Maria reassures him that no story he tells her could be worse than what she imagines, and wryly acknowledges that she suspects Ransom hasn’t even told her all of this one.

Meanwhile, though both Sargents lament that the other’s letters are far more interesting, I was genuinely surprised to find that Maria’s life on the home front was nearly as exciting as Ransom’s misadventures at war. In one note, she writes about the tragic loss of a neighbor’s barn in a fire, nearly costing the life of the elderly matron of the farm—the mother of one of Ransom’s fellow soldiers. I didn’t think much of it, at first; the incident seemed like an unfortunate, but not unusual, occurrence in rural 19^th-century New Hampshire. In a subsequent missive, however, Maria reports that the New Londoners are starting to suspect arson. Having expected mostly farm updates and concern for Ransom, I could barely believe it when I read those words. I was even more surprised when, a few letters later, Maria reveals the whole sordid affair: the fire was set by the jealous wife of an unfaithful soldier who burned down her husband’s family’s barn in revenge. Suddenly, life on the home front sounded more complicated than sitting around waiting and worrying.