These are really interesting! If you have no time, just read the 1860 letter about the election and balloon launch, and/or read my summary of the last letter here:
Here you’ll find several 19-century letters between my great-great-great grandfather Roswell Bates and his son Carroll Bates. They lived in different towns in northern New York.
I’ve made some highlights and added a few links in the last set of letters, which begin only 9 days after the attack on Fort Sumter in April 1861. In these letters, Carroll writes to his father about the “awful, unprovoked war which is upon us.”
He wanted his community to help “prevent the overthrow of those blessed privileges which were bought by the blood of our forefathers—which blessings were civil and religious liberty, free speech, free press and, what no other nation ever fully enjoyed, the right to choose our rulers or law-givers by our own voice through the ballot-box.”
He does not mention slavery as a reason to fight the good fight. We can’t know what he thought about that issue, as he doesn’t mention it in any of these letters.
Carroll saves his greatest ire for his brother-in-law Frank Flanders, married to his sister Louisa. “Why does he not stand up for the Union first and Party next?”
Frank was the editor of the Franklin Gazette in Malone, NY, which promoted “Copperhead Democrat” views. These were northern Democrats who were vehemently opposed to the North getting involved in the war, and to Lincoln, and they were quite vocal about their opinions.
Frank was arrested for aiding and abetting treason, and Carroll mentions the arrest.
Many men from the community enlisted for the Union, and Carroll eventually became a surgeon/doctor at the local military camp. He describes many of his medical activities and patients, both in and out of the military.
At the end are a couple short letters from Louisa to her father (Roswell).