Below is the scan
of a May 29, 1863, letter from Private Albert Pancake, 80th
Indiana Infantry, Company H, to his brother William Henry
Harrison Pancake residing in Pike County, Indiana. By this
time, Private Pancake has spent all eight months of his
Civil War service defending Kentucky for the Union. The
regiment has survived the devastation of the battle of
Perryville; the long, cold winter of 1862-63; and is now a
much smaller unit. Pancake mentions three noteworthy events
in this letter: the fact that the Rebels (in the form of
CSA General John Hunt Morgan's Raiders) are nearby, the
fact that he has just been paid $52 after going without his
soldier's salary for four months, and that Albert, like any
20 year-old young man, has been spending some time thinking
about the womenfolk back home, women who are increasing
being snatched up by local anti-war Democrats or Kentucky
refugees who have refused the uniform. This development
infuriated Albert.
This letter, like
virtually all his letters, is written on one piece of paper
which is folded longitudinally and scribed on both sides to
give the appearance of four written pages. The first scan
below is pages 1 & 4 (page 1 on the right hand side).
The second scan is pages 2 & 3 (page 2 on the left).
As you can see,
there is no punctuation, no paragraphs, phonetic spelling,
and inconsistent capitalization. All these characteristics
are quite normal for a modestly educated Civil War soldier
of the ranks. They also present a challenge to understand
and transcribe.
This is the
second of many posts leading up to the publication of the
complete archive of Civil War letters written by Private
(eventually Sergeant) Pancake to his relatives in Pike
County.
My thanks to Tad
Berlin for these materials and the permission to post them.
