Moulton, Jotham Tilden

[Group of Five Detailed Letters Written During the First Two Years of the Civil War, Describing the Lawlessness and Violence in Missouri]

[Various places in Missouri & Illinois: 1861-1862]. Five letters, totaling [18]pp. Previously folded. Minor wear and dust soiling. Accomplished in a highly legible script. Very good. Item #3691

A highly detailed and well written group of five letters by Jotham Tilden Moulton III (1836-1909) that describe his experience during the beginning of the Civil War in Missouri. Moulton was a Maine native who relocated with his parents to Chicago in adolescence. His father was a lawyer, edited the Chicago Tribune, and was said to be a personal friend of Abraham Lincoln. The younger Moulton, judging by these letters, was a lukewarm Unionist at best at the outset of the conflict, but soon enlisted in the U.S. Army.

Moulton was a civilian when he wrote the first two letters offered here. In 1861 he sought a position as a school teacher, and removed to Farmington, Missouri, south of St. Louis, which like much of the state was in a state of simmering violence between secessionists and Unionists. As a northerner who tried to remain outside of politics, he came under suspicion from both sides. On August 5, he wrote:

"They told me that I was going to a very suspicious place; and when I got down to Farmington I found that it was a very suspicious place indeed. The people here were almost unanimous for the Union a few months ago, but now they are almost unanimous for the Southern Confederacy. The same game has been played here that has been played in almost every part of the state. The neighborhood was quiet, till the soldiers came down on some frivolous errand and exasperated the whole population against them. More than one hundred men from this county have joined the Confederate army; among them men who were formerly stigmatized as 'Black Republicans'.... I do not know what I shall do myself. I certainly shall not violate my oath, though my sympathies are all Southern."

Later that month, on August 31, he wrote again from the "Independent Republic of Missouri":

"Horse stealing is so common as hardly to be thought a crime. The practise of wearing arms is almost universal. I slept one night in a house where three or four secessionists locked the doors and lay down with pistols under their pillows and guns leaning against their beds. The very next night, I stayed in a strong Union settlement, where the people all assembled in one house, then men lying the woods with weapons and blankets.... Large districts will never submit to Gamble, unless they are conquered. Large districts will never submit to Jackson, unless they are conquered. This is the worst possible state of affairs.... It appears to me that the only thing a good citizen can do is to relinquish his individual predilections and support the side of sound principle.... This sort of reasoning throws me at once into the Union party."

The same letter continues later:

"An Englishman undertook to get up a home guard in this vicinity. The citizens pulled down his flag and tore it to pieces. A few days afterwards he was taken out of his house and shot -- and twenty thousand U.S. soldiers were within a day's ride! It is nevertheless true that a great part of our troubles were brought upon us by Abolitionists and Union men, who tattled without truth or principle and brought quiet, orderly Secessionists into danger and disgrace. It is true also, that the Federal soldiers have made for themselves the greater part of the work they have to do in Missouri.... The Lincoln newspapers deny that outrages have been committed; the Federal officers do not deny it, but on the contrary, admit the fact in express terms, though some of them profess to regret it...."

After feeling compelled to choose a side, Moulton enlisted in September 1861 with the 33rd Illinois Infantry, which had so many educators it was informally known as the Teachers' Regiment. He was not much of an asset to the Union cause, however -- the three letters present from the period of his enlistment, dated January through November 1862, were all written from various hospitals. On October 26, he wrote, "A year's service has abated my ardor, as well as shattered my constitution." These letters are nevertheless quite discursive in their account of his situation and his surroundings. In the same letter, for example, Moulton provides a long description of Mound City, Illinois, just across the Mississippi River and one of the hospital locations of his convalescence:

"All the buildings bear the marks of past floods, the water line being in some cases as high as a man's shoulders. The name is sometimes contracted and written 'Md. City;' if you articulate the first two letters -- their elementary sounds -- you will have the euphonious & appropriate title of 'Mud City;' or if you are a little careless in punctuation, you may write it 'M.D. City,' a name which appears to me quite suitable now that so large a number of surgeons parade the streets, and so large a proportion of the energies of the place are devoted to the work of curing sick and wounded men, or sending them to their long home...."

Price: $5,750.00