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"Well, Mary" — Civil War Letters of a Wisconsin Volunteer By Bill Brobst John Franklin Brobst, my g'g'grandfather, enlisted in the Twenty-Fifth Wisconsin Infantry from Buffalo County in September 1862, at the age of 24. After training at La Crosse and Camp Randall, WI, he was sent first to Minnesota to quell an Indian uprising, and then south to fight the Southern rebels. Throughout his wartime service, he wrote many letters to his 13-year-old girlfriend Mary Englesby back in Mondovi, WI. Those letters began in 1863 and continued to June, 1865, when he returned home. John served at Vicksburg, and was then sent to Helena, Arkansas, where with other soldiers he helped scout for guerillas. He captured countless geese, chickens, pigs, cows, horses, and anything else of value, but found few guerillas. In 1864, he marched with Gen. Sherman's army to Atlanta. Not exactly like the torchbearers for the Atlanta Olympic Games in 1996, John carried a different torch into Atlanta 132 years earlier, with much more tragic results. Sickness kept John from marching through Georgia with Sherman; he remained in Atlanta in a military hospital at Kennesaw Mountain for several months. After recovery in late 1864, he travelled by steamer up the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers and then by train down into North Carolina where he rejoined his army buddies on their northern march just in time to go to Washington, DC, and march in the celebratory parade at the war's end. He was mustered out in Washington in June 1865. Like most soldiers, John groused about training, about hard marches and poor food, about enforced idleness and many other things, but he also took pride in being part of an outfit that could take hard, rough treatment. With his fellow soldiers, and like his father, he was disgusted with the politicians and "copperheads" who the soldiers felt were responsible for the war. They wanted Jeff Davis "tied to a fence post and let the grasshoppers kick him to death", but they went right on fighting. His letters reflect the pride of the mid-westerners in being a part of the armies of Grant and Sherman, and the tolerant contempt they had for the ineffective Army of the Potomac. And each letter started, "Well, Mary, ....." Mary kept every one of John's letters. Although his first letters to Mary were merely to a young daughter to a friend of the family, their trust and affection grew. And by the time John returned home, after three years, he and Mary were engaged to be married! What is also amazing, as a parallel, is that their frequent letters flowed back and forth so freely, what with the wartime troop movements and the poor and overloaded transportation system. John died in 1917, but Mary lived to be 93, and died in 1943. Through my youth, I remembered her taking the letters out of the box and reading them to me with the stories of battles, marches, prisons, and rebs. After her death, her letters lay in the box, forgotten, in the home of a daughter, my aunt. My sister, Peg Roth, found them nearly fifteen years later. With the help of the University of Wisconsin Press, she copied the frail, faded script and compiled the letters into a love story more moving than most fiction. In one story, John told of the campfire discussions during the many truces. Union and Confederate soldiers would sit together and swap stories of the war. During one skirmish, some reb soldiers invaded their camp while the northerners were off on patrol. Someone stole the photographs John had of his sisters and of Mary. John was devastated, for those pictures kept him going through some tough times, reminding him of what was waiting for him at home. A few weeks later, at one of the truce campfires, soldiers from the two sides were comparing notes about southern and northern girls. One of the southern soldiers said he believed the Yankee girls were better looking, and he had some pictures to prove it. He pulled out John's pictures! The reb admitted he had been the one who had ransacked John's belongings. They all had a good laugh! For those interested in Civil War stories, the book Well, Mary is available from the Mimosa Book Store, 212 Henry Street North, Madison, Wisconsin 53703-2204. Phone 608-256-5432. $13.95, postage paid. This page was last updated on Monday, 21-Feb-2011 18:18:47 MST
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