"Dear Mary"
The Civil War Letters of
William Silveus, Private
Company I, 8th Pennsylvania Reserve Infantry
On the morning of December 13, 1862, Major-General W. B. Franklin's "Left Grand
Division" of the Army of the Potomac stood in battle formation near Fredericksburg,
Virginia, between the Rappahannock River and the Heights south of town which formed the
defensive position of General "Stonewall" Jackson's corps of the Army of
Northern Virginia. Among the troops of Major-Genral John F. Reynold's First Corps
stationed with the Left Grand Division was a division composed almost entirely of
Pennsylvania reserve infantry regiments commanded by Major-General George G. Meade. In
Meade's division that morning, William Silveus, a private from Greene County, in Company
I, 8th Pennsylvania Reserves, stood with his neighbors, relatives and friends and prepared
to "see the elephant" for the first time.
William Silveus had been born on October 2, 1834, the third son of David and Mary
(Bowman) Silveus, and had spent his entire life within a few miles of his family's home in
Center Township, Greene County, Pennsylvania. He married Mary Campbell (Mildred), daughter
of Charles Hart and Mary (Botkins) Mildred at the home of his brother in Center Township
on Sunday, September 28, 1856. They had two daughters, Mary Martha and Elizabeth
Sarah, the older who was born on April 9, 1860, and the younger on 27 September 1862.
Although William Silveus' reasons for enlisting in Company I on
August 25,1862, are unknown, the Silveus and Mildred families exhibited a curious
mixture of various attitudes during the Civil War period [not unlike their neighbors in
this southernmost Pennsylvania County]. Mary's brother, Daniel Mildred, became a
school teacher during the 1850's. His travels in pursuit of his profession led him
to settle in Calloway County, Missouri, from where on January 22, 1854, he wrote to his
brother Albert that "free states I don't like, for there is more philanthropy,
hospitality, and friendly feelings in slave states than ever I have seen exhibited in free
states." When war erupted however, Albert Mildred enlisted in Company I of the
Pennsylvania Reserves with the initial rush of volunteers on June 20, 1861.
During the course of his career as an infantryman in the Army of the Potomac, William
Silveus wrote several letters home to his wife, Mary. As one reads the letters, one
catches a glimpse of the development of a soldier in Mr. Lincoln's army. After
the war, the letters were carefully preserved by Mary Silveus. She passed them on to
the couple's youngest daughter, Martha Maria, who married a Waynesburg merchant, Jasper
Dulany. Martha Maria entrusted the letters to her oldest daughter, Mary Emma
(Dulany) Jacobs, and the letters came to light when her son, E. Bryan Jacobs, of
Waynesburg, permitted them to be copied by the local historical society. [From there
they were typed and indexed in PERSI--with typed copies at the Allen County Library which
I discussed last summer not knowing when I was there that they had these treasures.
jmb]
There are four letters altogether. Each is written in William Silveus' own
handwriting, exhibiting some of his quaint attempts at spelling. One letter, written when
he was very ill and discouraged, is drafted in pencil. Barely legible in some
places, this letter was obviously written while its author was in the depths of despair.
Taken as a whole, the letters chronicle one soldier's career in the Army of the
Potomac. The preservation of these letters for more than a hundred and forty years
is a tribute to the love and respect this man's family held for him and the sacrifice he
made for his country. The letters have been edited for missing punctuation and all
but the most interesting spelling errors have been corrected [by the typist at the
historical society]. The grammar of the letters has not been altered.
Hopefully this "setting of the scene" will aid in understanding and absorbing
what it must have meant to be a soldier during those awful days.
Judy Bedford
Letter
1