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(Will get that book one of these days - thanks!)

Here are some excerpts from some of the letters in our family treasury from that time - I'll post them on a couple of separate posts - including a snippet from the letter by General Stonewall Jackson to my ancestor Dr. W.S. White, Pastor of Lexington Presbyterian Church and friend of General Jackson.

This first snippet is from Hugh White to his Father, Dr. W.S. White. Hugh Augustus White was a student at Union Theological Seminary studying to go into the ministry (following his father and other relatives in that calling). Hampden-Sydney College was then the home of Union Theological Seminary. On April 18, 1861, it was announced in Richmond that the Virginia Convention had voted to secede from the Union on the previous day.

This letter is dated, April 22, 1861:

from Union Seminary

My dear father,

I may be able to labor during our approaching vacation as a colporteur (peddler of religious books). I hope I may. But events in this country are hastening on so rapidly to some dreadful catastrophe, that we can scarcely indulge the hope of doing anything except to fight and suffer. We feel the commotion here very much. ........ We hold ourselves ready to take part in the war. Some of our members are already drilling. As to myself I have been troubled to know what I should do. It would of course be much more to my taste to remain at home with you and mother. But you do not need my presence. It will blast my highest hopes to take any step which would retard or prevent my entrance into the ministry. And we certainly ought not to take up arms so hastily as men in other professions. Yet we are not exempt from military service and hence I hold myself ready to go wherever there is a lack of men. I will therefore drill with the Hampden-Sydney Company, and thus be better prepared to volunteer whenever it is necessary.

I do not know how this agrees with your wishes. From your last letter I'm afriad that your feelings are not fully with the Southern movement. But as I now observe that your last letter was dated April 12th, some days before it wsa known that Lincoln's policy is coercion and war, I no longer doubt the course which you will adopt. We of Virginia are between two fires. If we join one party, we join friends and allies; if we join the other we join enemies and become vassals. Our decision is then formed and we will seek to break the oppressor's yoke. Our only hope under God is in a united resistance even unto death. The end of the bloody tragedy now begun, no human eye can see: yet in resistance is our only hope. I am resolved, therefore that with your consent - for I am not yet a free man - I will fill the first vacancy in our ranks, where a man is needed to fight. My soul is in God's hands, and hence I fear him not who can only kill the body. Though I speak thus, I feel more and more anxious to be at my proper work. Yes, how delightful it would be to enter at once upon the work of saving men's souls, rather than efforts to detroy their bodies: and a feeble hope still lingers that my life will not end until I have done, at least, some little good in my Master's vineyard. But war is begun, and I must help to finish it. May God keep the minds of all of us in perfect peace amidst the tumult that is raging around us.

Your devoted son,
Hugh