“I should like to be home this Christmas night,” wrote Lieutenant Elisha Hunt Rhodes on Christmas day, 150 years ago. Lt. Rhodes, of the second Rhode Island, spent Christmas Day in camp just like he did the year before, in 1861 and he would spend two more Christmas Days in camp before the Civil war was over.
Elisha Rhodes is one of the most famous of the diarists of the Civil War and his stunning accounts of the War Between the States was published in 1985 as "All for the Union: The Civil War Diary and Letters of Elisha Hunt Rhodes" by Robert Hunt Rhodes, his great-grandson. Filmmaker Ken Burns featured Rhodes' war experiences in his 1990 documentary "The Civil War.” Rhodes's words reveal the motivation of a common Yankee foot soldier, an otherwise ordinary young man who endured the rigors of combat and exhausting marches, short rations, fear, and homesickness for a salary of $13 a month and the satisfaction of giving "all for the union."
The son of a New England sea captain, Elisha Hunt Rhodes enlisted into the Union army as an eighteen
year old private when fighting erupted in 1861.
Rhodes served with the Second Rhode Island Infantry for the
duration of the war, and fought in nearly every major battle in which the
Army of the Potomac was engaged. Rhodes
became an officer at age 20 and eventually rose from private to a 23 year old colonel
commanding his own regiment. He fought hard and
honorably in battles from Bull Run to Appomattox.
While we look back at the 150th Anniversary of
the Civil War, it is fitting that we celebrate this Christmas season with a
first-hand look at what war was like so many years ago.
Frequently cold, wet, tired and unfed, periodically the witness to death,
destruction incompetence and poor generalship, Elisha Hunt Rhodes endured.
When in camp, Christmas was a welcome but short reprieve
from the tedium of an army winter. In between Christmases was battle after
battle, shells screaming overhead, friends a few feet away wounded and dying.
Christmas 1862 was the second of Elisha Rhodes' four
Christmases spent in the Army of the Potomac, and his location for each serves
as a graphic representation of the progress of the army. Rhodes spent his first two Christmases in the
Army of the Potomac in camps around Washington, D.C. He does not record an entry for 1861, and he
remarks in 1862 that Christmas was a quiet day, a calm day in which the
soldiers were excused from drill and he enjoyed a visit by his brother-in-law
from Washington.
On New Year’s Eve he wrote, “Well, the year 1862 is
drawing to a close. As I look back I am bewildered when I think of the hundreds
of miles I have tramped, the thousands of dead and wounded that I have seen,
and the many strange sights that I have witnessed. I can truly thank God for
his preserving care over me and the many blessings I have received. One year
ago tonight I was an enlisted man and stood cap in hand asking for a furlough.
Tonight I am an officer and men ask the same favor of me. It seems to me right
that officers should rise from the ranks, for only such can sympathize with the
private soldiers. The year has not amounted to much as far as the War is
concerned, but we hope for the best and feel sure that in the end the Union
will be restored. Good bye, 1862.”
In 1863, near Brandy Station in northern Virginia, Elisha
Hunt Rhodes reported that he rode his recently acquired army horse, Kate, on
Christmas Day, and gave a Christmas dinner celebration for other officers
in the regiment, during which they endeavored to celebrate the holiday "in
a becoming manner."
Elisha Rhodes spent his fourth and last army Christmas in
a small hut in the trenches around Petersburg, Virginia. The Union army was laying siege to the city,
but there was little activity during the cold weather. On Christmas Eve, Rhodes entertained officers
from the 49th Pennsylvania, and after their departure officers from the 37th
Massachusetts serenaded him. On Christmas morning, he took a ride and watched
Union soldiers hauling logs to build warmer quarters. Rhodes commented, "This is the birth of
the Saviour, but we have paid very little attention to it in a religious
way." He closed his entry by
writing, "This is my fourth Christmas in the Army. I wonder if it will be
my last."
It was his last army Christmas. Elisha Hunt Rhodes was mustered out shortly
after the end of the Civil War in April 1865, and returned to his home in Rhode
Island. He worked as a cotton and wool trader for the rest of his life and,
like many soldiers, remained active in veteran affairs. Elisha Hunt Rhodes died on January 14, 1917.
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