Author: Emilie E. Palmer
Date: 4 March 1862
Location: Emilie E. Palmer 1859 Diary, Record Group 19/2, Oberlin College Archives
Document Type: Autograph Document
Introduction:
Of note in this entry are Palmer’s descriptions of letters she must answer. Homefront women frequently describe epistolary correspondence to be a “pleasure” and a “duty,” as soldiers relied on letters to keep their spirits high.1 Palmer seems somewhat uninterested in Dan as she is still attached to Hosea, or H. E., as evidenced in earlier entries. Civil War correspondences frequently became courtships, although Dan never proposed to Palmer.2
Although her entry is only a few sentences, she writes about a more “typical” day, and although the Civil War is never explicitly mentioned, this passage exemplifies how subtly the war permeated everyday life. This entry also highlights how men and family elders controlled various aspects of women’s lives at this time.
Document Text:
March 4th
The term commenced today. It is hard work to study tonight. I really got the fidgets over my Caesar lesson. Uncle doesn’t think it best for me to take more than three studies. I shall do as he thinks best. I rec’d a letter from home last Saturday and one from “Dan.”3 Must answer the letter soon or he won’t like it. Went over to the district school exhibition this afternoon.
Transcribed by Hannah Cohen
1“Gail Hamilton,” “A Call to My Country-Women,” Atlantic Monthly 11, no. 65 (March 1863), 146. Web address, accessed 1 July 2015.
2Many soldiers sought “the assurance of love, and a world beyond the battlefield where someone cared about [them], a world in which his future lay secured amidst the values and norms he had left behind.” Some of these courtships fell into the pattern of “gently–although sometimes more manipulatively–coaxing reticent women into correspondence that blossomed into full fledged courtship and marital engagement.” (Carol Lasser, “Rules of Engagement: Civil War Courtship Letters and the ‘Homefront Imaginary’” (Oberlin, Ohio, 2015), p. 3 and 14).
3The first mention of Dan. Likely Daniel C. Gould, member of the 105th Ohio regiment.
4Palmer is likely referring to the First Union School, which operated between 1860 and 1874. The only other school in Oberlin, Ohio was the Preparatory at Oberlin College. (Bob Oliphant, A Brief History of Oberlin High School, Oberlin, Ohio, Web address, accessed 17 March 2015).
