By James Marten
Civil War-era newspapers and magazines liked to suggest that soldiers celebrated Christmas with gusto, as shown in this famous cover illustration from Harper’s Weekly. The men may be far from home, but certain traditions continued. Even Santa, as shown in this Thomas Nast illustration, found his way to army camps, lightening the burden of men separated from families. Ever since, Christmas separations have been staples of 
holiday-themed pop culture, from the song ‘I’ll Be Home for Christmas” to more recent heart-tugging videos of mother and fathers returning form long deployments just in time for the holidays and the recorded messages played during NFL and college football games from soldiers, sailors, and marines wishing their families Merry Christmas.
But Santa did not come to every Civil War-era camp, however, and the letters of Capt. Edwin Brown of the Sixth Wisconsin Infantry indicate how little time soldiers had for Christmas. Yet they also reveal fleeting thoughts of the happiness they attached to remembered Christmases. The thirty-year-old had written often since leaving his young wife and three small children in Fond du Lac in the summer of 1861. The Sixth would later be famous as one of the best and most bloodied units in the Union army—the Iron Brigade—but by the time the first Christmas of the war rolled around the regiment had spent most of their time drilling. They’d settled into winter quarters outside Washington, DC, earlier in the month. Brown was captain of Company E, commanding roughly 100 men in the regiment of just over 1000, but he was also one of the best singers in the regiment, and a founding member of a musical society that entertained their comrades occasionally.
December 20 had been a busy day, and late that night Edwin settled down in front of a fire in the rough little cabin he shared with other officers \ to write a letter. It was filled with gossip about fellow soldiers who Ruth might have known and the sad news that one of his sergeant’s had recently died of a vague ailment.
Out of the blue, Brown mentions that “Next Wednesday is Christmas.” He had no idea what he’d be doing, “unless it be to drill. ‘No peace for the wicked,’ you know.” He wistfully remarked that “I should like to sit with my little family around the paternal hearthstone with a good blazing fire in front, friends by my side, and the usual delicacies on the table.” The thought passes, and he begins to wind down the letter by apologizing 
for failing to get a promised photograph taken of him. His months in the army, he feared, had “altered [his] looks and I fear the change is not for the better.” As his fire went out and he reluctantly brought “this ‘talk’ to a close,” he asked Ruth to greet friends and family, “take good care of the ‘babies’ [and] tell them good things of their pa.”
Edwin’s brief mention of Christmas shows that some the traditions we appreciate about the holiday were well-established (but only just) by the mid-nineteenth century. But this short, rather grumpy passage also suggests that it was simply too painful for Edwin to reflect on his absence from his wife and little ones. The same was true few days later, when he found a few moments between writing year-end reports to write a hasty note. Like the other letter, it was mainly about practical matters—comings and goings in the regiment, the kinds of shirts and mittens that Ruth should send if she had time—but he responded briefly to her letter of a few days past, when she described her “appearance as ‘Santa Claus’” on Christmas. “You must have looked comical, and I hope you all enjoyed yourselves.” Edwin doesn’t say it, but he must have felt a twinge of heartbreak to know that his absence had forced Ruth to fill the role that he no doubt had played before the war. Of course, Ruth had to fill many other unfamiliar roles while Edwin was away, but for at least a few moments, and despite his surface amusement, this one probably hit hard. The brief glimpse of happier times cheered him only for a moment. “I did not enjoy myself much on Christmas,” he wrote pointedly.” The boys had no drill, but it was busy, without . . . sport.” War would bring much worse to Edwin and his “boys,” but in his first Christmas away from home he can be forgive for being a little self-pitying.
There is much we don’t know about nineteenth-century families—in and out of the army—but we do get glimpses of those relationships in the letters that have survived between Civil War soldiers and their wives. Christmas 1861 might not have been a happy one for Edwin Brown, but in his gloomy reports about the Civil War’s first Christmas, we capture nuggets of the yuletide past.
Sources:
Edwin Brown to Ruth Brown, December 20 and December 31, 1861, Edwin Brown Letters, Kenosha Civil War Museum.
Lance J. Herdegen and William J. K. Beaudot, In the Bloody Railroad Cut at Gettysburg: The 6th Wisconsin of the Iron Brigade and its Famous Charge (1990, 2015).
Image sources:
Harper’s Weekly, January 3, 1863
“CAPTAIN EDWIN BROWN, Lawyer, Patriot, Soldier,
James Marten is chair of the history department and author, most recently, of America’s Corporal: James Tanner in War and Peace (2015). His current project is Becoming the Sixth Wisconsin: A Civil War Regiment in War and Peace.
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