Soldiering with Sherman: Civil War Letters of George F Cram

Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, Spring 2002 by Ferraro, William M

Soldiering with Sherman: Civil War Letters of George F Cram. Edited by Jennifer Cain Bohrnstedt (DeKalb, Illinois: Northern Illinois University Press, 2000. Pp. xxviii, 210. $32.00)

George E Cram was a twenty-one-year-old student at Wheaton College in northern Illinois when he decided to volunteer for the Union army on patriotic grounds. Cram's mother, Anna Damon Blanchard Cram, had raised him and his sister with the assistance of extended family after their father went to the California gold fields and never returned. Y ung Cram loved and respected his mother, and he carried into the 105t Illinois infantry a strong sense of personal rectitude, a high standard of morality, and a stem religious faith. In a large number of the letters published in this volume, he took great delight in indicating how he steered clear of camp vices, practiced bodily hygiene, maintained the decorous thoughts of a gentlemen, and associated almost solely with soldiers who shared his beliefs. For unknown reasons, Cram had promised his mother not to seek or accept an officer's commission. This led to the anomaly of an educated soldier with an evidently sterling military record spending the entirety of his three-year enlistment in the ranks, first as a private and finally as an orderly sergeant.

Cram's letters from the field form the core of this book. They number eighty, one to an uncle and seventy-nine to his mother. In direct and descriptive prose, he traces his military service from its beginning in camps near Chicago, through a lengthy middle period guarding railroads in Kentucky and Tennessee, and then to the prolonged fighting and maneuvering that characterized Major General William Tecumseh Sherman's campaign to take Atlanta and subsequent great marches. Forty-three of the letters were written in 1864, most of them from when Cram actively campaigned in Georgia. The remaining thirty-seven letters are spread rather evenly over each of his other three years in the army. The last letter was written in Washington, D. C., on June 1, 1865.

Cram records in often graphic detail how men died from sickness as well as enemy fire. He is also very sensitive to the deficiencies of officers and the hardships that burdened common soldiers when under incompetent or heartless leaders. He developed a stolid philosophy toward soldiering, however, that sustained him through many travails and discomforts. Throughout his enlistment, he asked for items from home to ease his lot. Some things, like an overcoat for the winter or favorite foods, are unsurprising; others, like cayenne pepper and ground ginger to combat diarrhea better than the regimental physician's medicines, raise eyebrows.

While most valuable for their views of the western army ranks, Cram's letters also contain occasional snapshots of recognized generals. He greatly admired William S. Rosecrans and Joseph Hooker and lamented their departures from command. Cram also liked Ulysses S. Grant, whom he saw about Nashville in January 1864, and praised him for his lack of pretensions: "He is a plain man, and deals in a plain way, especially with rebels." (66) Cram warmed to Sherman after initial hostility: "Sherman is as secret as a post and no one knows his plans till they are entirely executed. The boys call him 'crazy Billy,' but there seems to be some 'method in his madness.'" (154) Without doubt, he welcomed Sherman's preference for flanking enemy entrenchments over the alternative of headlong assaults.

Significant effort went into the editorial apparatus supporting these letters. There is a brief introductory note by the editor (identified as an independent Civil War scholar) and a much longer introduction by Professor Orville Vernon Burton of the University of Illinois. Headnotes open each of the twelve chapters and endnotes gloss names, events, and terms found in the letters. The editor also supplies a short afterword and an appendix that reprints Cram's account of the Atlanta campaign's Battle of Resaca published in 1900.

Unfortunately, the helpfulness of the editorial apparatus is not equal to its scale. Nothing gives a sustained narrative of Cram's life and important family relations. Cram's letters clearly show that his mother is active in some business in Wheaton and then moves to Aurora, Illinois, but the various essays and notes largely ignore the world of noncombatants in these Illinois towns. Relatively few of the explanatory notes appear unnecessary, but it is unclear why some individuals, both famous and obscure, receive extensive handling, while others receive little or none. Notably, some good work is done with manuscript pension records to provide information on common soldiers. The editor overlooked, however, much modem Civil War scholarship, in particular works on Sherman and his campaigns and the documentary editions conveniently presenting the papers of Ulysses S. Grant and Andrew Johnson. Professor Burton's disjointed introduction disappoints, and his misspellings of Henry Wager Halleck, Fort Donelson, and Chickamauga are inexcusable blunders. The fifteen pages devoted to this introduction probably would have been better used to transcribe substantial portions of Cram's wartime diary that makes fleeting, and tantalizing, appearances throughout the annotation.