66
2015
NORTH CAROLINA L I T E R A R Y RE V I E W
TWO EPISTOLARY OFFERINGS FROM THE NORTH CAROLINA DIVISION OF ARCHIVES AND HISTORY a review by Lorraine Hale Robinson John R. Barden, ed. Letters to the Home Circle: The North Carolina Service of Pvt. Henry A. Clapp (Company F, Forty-fourth Massachusetts Volunteer Militia, 1862–1863). Raleigh: Division of Archives and History, North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources, 1998. Judkin Browning and Michael Thomas Smith, eds. Letters from a North Carolina Unionist: John A. Hedrick to Benjamin S. Hedrick, 1862–1865. Raleigh: Division of Archives and History, North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources, 2001.
LORRAINE HALE ROBINSON wrote, from 1998 to 2007, the entries in NCLR’s serialized “Dictionary of North Carolina Writers,” as well as various articles, sidebars, and reviews, while serving as Senior Associate Editor of NCLR. She retired in 2012, but continues to respond enthusiastically and wisely when called upon for advice.
Two important collections of North Carolina Civil War letters published by the North Carolina Division of Archives and History are now available from the publisher as a complementary set. Letters to the Home Circle: The North Carolina Service of Pvt. Henry A. Clapp (Company F, Forty-fourth Massachusetts Volunteer Militia, 1862–1863) first appeared in 1998; the nowcompanion volume, Letters from a North Carolina Unionist: John A. Hedrick to Benjamin S. Hedrick, 1862–1865, was originally published in 2001. Together, the volumes present both intimate and publically revealing pictures of Union-occupied Eastern North Carolina (especially New Bern and Beaufort) during the Civil War. In the time before the twentyfirst century tsunami of communications media, the letter was “it.” Letters certainly conveyed information, but they also brought to some distant locale a tangible object – unfolded, held in the hands, read and reread, refolded, and then unfolded and read again – that in many ways was the absent letter writer. Letter writers choose what to write (or not to write – to conceal as well as reveal). Reading letters a century and a half after their creation requires a careful decoding of the psychological filters that writers often adopt – a careful attention to the perspectives and prejudices of the writer. Letters to the Home Circle is a remarkable set of documents. The originals of the letters are, apparently no longer extant, but what remains is a mother’s careful handwritten transcriptions. The dedicatory note reads:
number 24
To Henry; as a permanent testimonial to the value of these autographic materials of a true devotion to our household and our perplexed and sorrowing country This Transcript, a labor of reciprocal love is most affectionately inscribed by
His Mother
Dorchester, June 10, 1863.
Already, the reader is aware of a deep and abiding affection that characterizes the writer’s (and transcriber’s) family – Private Henry Austin Clapp’s “home circle.” Clearly, the family (as modeled by transcriber Mary Ann Bragg Clapp) is both highly literate and dedicated to the nation. Immediately following the above dedication is his mother’s “prefatory.” This contains a brief biographical sketch of Henry Clapp, including his many academic accomplishments and the circumstances of his nine-month term of enlistment in the 44th Regiment of Massachusetts. The transcriber states that “she has not assumed the liberty of omitting any portion of the series . . . and affording what may be held as a literal portrait of the young, patriotic and christian [sic] soldier” (5; italics in book). She goes on to state that in neither the original letters nor in the transcriptions is there any intent to instruct or entertain anyone beyond the family, who were the recipients of the