January 1, 1862---Rye coffee

JANUARY 1, 1862:              

 A letter was found on the body of a young soldier from the 10th Alabama, killed at Dranesville (quite possibly by accidental crossfire, as half the Confederate casualties were) that gives the North a glimpse into the lives and minds and privations of the Confederate populace. The letter is from the soldier's mother, Sarah Gover, in Alabama, and it was written in November of this year. This hardy Southern mother enjoins her son to prepare his immortal soul for eternity, for he cannot know when he will be called hence:

“Don’t put off the day of preparation,” she warns him with loving sternness, “and think it won’t be you that will be called, for it may as likely be you as any other.” 

She goes on to give him further advice to steel his spine: “Don’t forget the endearments of home—father, mother, brothers and sisters—yet don’t grieve about home.”

She tells him frankly, “There is nothing here but hard times and distress for every mother that has a son in the army” and further says that after making clothing for the soldiers, she hardly had enough wool to make clothes for the little children.

“All the ladies in this country wear homespun—the rich as well as the poor,” she writes.  

“There is nothing in the stores here, and it is nothing uncommon to see a lady at church with a homespun dress on.” What is more, “There is nothing talked about here, but something to eat—that is, meat and coffee. Almost half of the families in this part of the country are drinking rye coffee, for there is no coffee to get for love or money, nor won’t be until Lincoln’s blockade is torn up.” 

What was more, the mother wrote, “We can hardly get enough leather to make shoes, as the speculators have been round, and bought up all the leather, and make the people pay just such prices as they please.” 

Although the mother has made her son a blanket and some “woolen drawers” and wishes very much to send them to him, she says his father cannot find a hat worth wearing anywhere.  

Unfortunately for this mother, her son will not long need a wool blanket, drawers, or a hat.