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These Civil War letters were transcribed from the originals. Every effort has been made to preserve their structure and spelling. Some words were indecipherable and a dashed line (____) appears in their place. Other words were included where the letters were distinct, even if they made no sense. While some punctuation does exit, I felt that it was necessary to use a (/) to indicate the end of a sentence or a thought in order to make it easier to read the letter. To understand the significance of the letters and make some sense of their content, it was necessary to do research on the 7th Regiment of Michigan Infantry. This in turn led to research on Ralph H. Rea. What I discovered about Ralph H. Rea and the 7th Regiment was, to me, quite interesting. Rea is described in his official enlistment documents as being 5' 3" tall, with gray eyes, dark hair and a dark complexion. He was in uniform almost the entire war from August 1861 until July 1865 and rose from the rank of private to sergeant. He was in a combat unit, the 7th Regiment of Michigan Infantry, a volunteer unit of men from the Detroit area. It was assigned to the Army of the Potomac throughout the war. The 7th was in some of the heaviest fighting, and in some of the most decisive battles of the entire Civil War. Rea wrote letters to his cousin, Horace E. Allen, during a three year period that commenced with his enlistment and ended when he was captured during combat on August 25, 1864. Official records indicate that he escaped from prison after several months of confinement, and made his way back north to safety. Probably the most remarkable of the letters is the one dated July 8, 1863. It was written five days after the battle of Gettysburg and describes some of the action from his perspective. Research shows that the action he was describing on the third of July, (the artillery bombardment for two hours, and the subsequent attack on their position at Cemetery Ridge), was what has now become known as Pickett's charge. So what he was describing, was his part in helping to turn back the charge and turn the tide of war, for it is generally acknowledged that the stopping of that charge was the high water mark of the Civil war. The following is a description of 7th Regiment activity at the battle of Gettysburg taken from the Record of Service of Michigan Volunteers in the Civil War 1861-1865: "The Seventh entered the Pennsylvania Campaign in 1863 with the Army of the Potomac, and by long and forced marches reached Gettysburg on the 2nd of July, and was assigned a position on Cemetery Hill, which it retained until the close of the battle, July 3rd. The Regiment took 14 officers and 151 men into action and lost in the two days' fighting, 21 killed and 44 wounded, an eloquent eulogy upon the heroism of this regiment." I have not done any research on James A. Gardner, who was apparently a friend of Horace Allen from Oxford, Michigan. In a letter dated September 4, 1863, Ralph Rea asks how "James G "is getting along. From that reference, I think that is safe to assume that it is the same person, indicating that James Gardner was probably not on active duty for some unknown reason. My father, Forrest E. Allen, has been responsible for preserving these letters after he received them from his father Ray E. Allen, the son of Horace E. Allen. All three men were born in or in the vicinity of Oxford, Michigan. I have transcribed the letters to provide family members with readable copies. I did some research to understand more about the historical significance of the letters and to determine the geographical area from where they were written during the Civil War.
October, 1992 | ||||||||
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