hrj

Originally published at Alpennia.com. You can comment here or there.

The eternal complaint of the regular correspondent whose letters are not answered is sharpened a bit in Abiel's note to his sister, "If I do not get an answer to this I will send another if I live to the end of the week." He may intend it partly as teasing, but the casualties that get mentioned in his diary entries suggest a certain seriousness.

We are finally informed of the name of Abiel's servant--Mr. Griffis (Griffiths?)--and I'm trying to work out what further information this reference might provide. I'm hesitant here to jump to conclusions about how Abiel would or would not refer to people. I had previously guessed--based on the implication that the man wsa a civilian--that he might be black. But I don't know enough about standard social practices to know whether Abiel referring to him as "Mr." is meaningful evidence on this point.

Originally published at Alpennia.com. You can comment here or there.

The time finally comes! Abiel gets his commission and is returned to active service, with a rather sentimental send-off by his comrades at Camp Distribution. No more trips into Washington for plays and fine dining. The military run-around should be familiar to anyone who has dealt with that bureaucracy. Abiel can't be officially be discharged from his old regiment and get his back pay and whatnot settled because that regiment isn't available to deal with the paperwork, being in Andersonville Prison. So he has a conditional discharge that says if he isn't mustered in to the new regiment with his new rank, then he returns to his former regiment...the one in prison.