“Give Yourself No Trouble About Me”: The Shiloh Letters of George W. Lennard Edited by Paul Hubbard and Christine Lewis” Hoosiers were stout defenders of the Union in the Civil War, and one who came forward willingly to serve and die was George W. Lennard. When the Thirty-sixth Indiana Volunteer Infantry regiment was organized in September, 1861, Lennard joined its ranks as a private soldier but was immediately elected lieutenant and named as adjutant. His duty with the Thirty-sixth was short-lived, however, because within weeks he was made a captain and assigned as aide-de-camp to Brigadier General Thomas J. Wood, who in the Shiloh campaign com- manded the Sixth Division of Major General Don Carlos Buell’s Army of the Ohio. Shortly before the battle of Murfreesboro, or Stone’s River, December 31, 1862-January 2, 1863, Lennard was commissioned lieutenant colonel of the Fifty-seventh Indi- ana Volunteer Infantry, and at that battle he was wounded while fighting with his regiment. After convalescing in the spring of 1863, he rejoined his unit for the campaign against Chattanooga under Major General William S. Rosecrans. When the Federal forces occupied that city in September, 1863, Len- nard was detailed as provost marshal, and he had no part in the Battle of Chickamauga. The Fifty-seventh Indiana, how- ever, did participate in the storming of Missionary Ridge in November, and Lennard escaped unscathed in that dramatic assault. In the spring of 1864 fortune deserted him, and as the Army of the Cumberland marched toward Atlanta, he was wounded at Resaca, Georgia, on the afternoon of May 14 and died that evening.’ * Paul Hubbard is professor of history, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona. Christine Lewis, a resident of Tempe, holds an M.A. from Arizona State University. George W. Lennard’s army career can be traced in his letters; in U.S., War Department, War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies (128 vols., Washington, 1880-1901),Ser. I, Vol. X, part 1, pp. 377, 378. 709, Vol. XVI, part 1, pp. 148, 242, 786, Vol. XX, 22 Indiana Magazine of History During his army career Lennard was conscientious in writ- ing to his wife, Clarinda, and there are extant approximately 160 of these letters. They are in the manuscript collection of the Arizona State University Library, having been donated by Mr. and Mrs. Otto Schmieder who acquired them upon the death of Mrs. Asahel W. Lennard, a Phoenix resident and widow of Lennard's younger son. The following article includes twenty-two letters written between March 28, 1862, when Wood's division left Nashville for Pittsburg Landing on the Tennessee River to join Major General Ulysses S. Grant, and May 30, when the Union forces under Major General Henry W. Halleck occupied Corinth, Mississippi. Lennard arrived on the Shiloh battlefield on April 7, the afternoon of the second day, observed the grisly aftermath, and participated in the events leading to the capture of Corinth. A resident of New Castle, Indiana, when the war started, Lennard was born on a farm near Newark, Licking County, Ohio, on March 25, 1825. He had little formal schooling as a child, but he did learn to read and write by his middle teens. In an age of lax professional standards Lennard studied for three years at the Eclectic Medical Institute of Medicine in Cincin- nati and acquired a degree of doctor of medicine. He took up residence in New Castle and practiced for two years until he bought the New Castle Courier which he edited and published for eighteen months. Not yet thirty years old, he next took up study of the law at the Law School of Cincinnati and graduated in 1855. According to one biographer, Lennard was a successful attorney, and the 1860 census lists his occupation as attorney- at-law.* The letters indicate, however, that his principal occu- pation was dealing in real estate and other financial transac- tions. Lennard was described as a handsome man five feet ten inches tall, well proportioned, and appropriately dressed, with dark hair and dark gray eyes.3 Lennard's letters to his wife reveal him as a loving hus- band and father who is constantly concerned about the family's part 1, pp. 461, 493, 495, Vol. XXXVIII, part 1, pp. 332, 345, 346, 350; and in George Hazzard, Hazzards History of Henry County, Indiana, 1822-1906 (2 vols., New Castle, Ind., 1906), 11, 636-38. His name, rank, and regiment appear in Francis B. Heitman, Historical Register and Dictionary of the United States Army, from Its Organization, September 29, 1789, to March 2, 1903 (2 vols., Washington, 1903), 11, 121. Hazzard, History of Henry County, 11, 636; US.,Eighth Census, 1860, population schedules for Henry County, Indiana, June 6, 1860 (Henry County Historical Society, New Castle, Indiana). W. F. Boor, History of Henry County, Indiana (Chicago, 1884), 369. Shiloh Letters of George W. Lennard 23 GEORGEW. LENNARD Courtesy Henry County Historical Society. New Castle, Indiana 24 Indiana Magazine of History welfare and always ready to advise his wife on managing the home in his absence. In a letter written from near Iuka, Mississippi, on June 10, 1862, Lennard remembers: “Ten years ago today we were united in the holy bonds of matrimony, and our destinies became one. From that day to the present hour my love for you has quietly flowed on widening and deepening in its course.” Indeed, the subject of love appears frequently in the correspondence. Lennard‘s letter of May 28, 1863, written from Murfreesboro, Tennessee, comments on “the deep, con- stant and ardent love” he has for his wife. He confesses: “There was a kind of sacred holyness about it which never warmed my heart before.” The product of a society perhaps less openly articulate about such a topic, Lennard ponders somewhat the propriety of his statements. He concludes: “But why should I feel ashamed of my feelings for YOU?"^ His letters are thus in part love letters. A strong patriotism also shows through Lennard’s writings. Dedicated thoroughly to the Union cause, he was in the service until victory or death. In February, 1864, he elected to stay with his regiment as it reenlisted, saying, “I wont back out when the work is half done.” He knew his wife would scold him for signing up for three more years, but he wrote: “To tell you the candid, honest truth I dont think I would be contented at home while the war is going on. I am solomly impressed that it is my duty to help put this rebelion down.”5 Lennard was an ambitious man who very much wanted to get ahead in the army and be well regarded by his superiors. Re- peatedly he discusses his hope to become a full colonel, but al- though he did command his regiment, he never rose above lieuten- ant colonel. Ruefully he wrote Clarinda from Chattanooga on October 18, 1863: “I guess I am about as high up in the military world as I will ever get. I have only got about 440 men present and absent, and a regiment to be entitled to a Colonel under the late order from the war-department must have over 800 of an agre- gate.”6 Lennard must have been a good officer, however, because his compassion for the suffering men in the ranks, the bewildered blacks, and the civilian victims of the war is frequently evident. As the Army of the Ohio marched toward Louisville, Kentucky, in the autumn of 1862, Lennard wrote: “We arrived here at mid-night 4George W. Lennard to Clarinda Lennard, June 10, 1862, May 28, 1863, Lennard Papers (Arizona State University Library, Tempe). Slbid., February 8, 1864. 6Zbid., October 18, 1863. Shiloh Letters of George W. Lennard 25 last night after a terable march through heat and dust. I never was so tired and woren out in my life. But, Oh! my God, the poor soldiers trudging through the dust over a rough turn pike on half rations, without tents, and many of them without blankets these cold nights. Is not there lot a hard one?” The officer corps of the army often came under Lennard’s criticism. He told his wife that he believed every officer from highest to lowest should be exam- ined for competence and those found wanting, whether or not they had “political influence or wealthy and influential friends,” should be dismissed from the service. “To many of our officers are inferior men, inferior to the private soldier they command.”8 Campaigning as he did in Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia, Lennard encountered many black people. His comments show sympathy for their confusion and fear, but he also registers the common white belief in black inferiority. His black servant, Dick, and his horse, John, are placed in the same category when in one sentence both are said to be well.9 Referring to Dick on another occasion, Lennard said: “He is like most negros-to get much out of him you have to watch him.” In the same letter Lennard wished he could send a Negro home, “but I think you would find one more trouble than value.”1° As the conflict ground on, Lennard’s letters frequently re- vealed his concern for the evil and futility of war. “What creatures we are. If the enemy runs we are mad, if he stands and whips us we are mad, and if we whip him and dont kill every rebel and take every thing they have the people at home are mad, and so it goes.”” While in a poor, backwoods area of Tennessee, Lennard lamented the effects that army foraging, “which means to go out and take every thing the citizens have to eat,” had on the local population.