The Soldier and the Scholar

Camp near Chattanooga, Tennessee

November 17, 1863

My Dearest Thomas,

The moon hangs low tonight, a silver scar above Missionary Ridge. I write with a splintered pencil, the paper torn from Sergeant Colby’s field manual—forgive the theft, but urgency compels me. Rebs shell our position hourly, and if this missive reaches you, know it was penned between the thunder of Parrott guns and the whispered prayers of men who may not see dawn.

You asked, in your last, why I volunteered. Let me now cast aside the half-truths I wore like a borrowed coat. It was not for Lincoln or liberty, though both have since claimed my allegiance. No, Thomas—it was to escape the torment of our final evening in the hayloft. The way your breath hitched when my hand brushed yours... God forgive me, I feared you’d name the thing that swelled between us. Better the Confederacy’s wrath than your recoil.

Yet here, amid the stink of gangrene and latrines, I’ve found unexpected kinship. Young Eli from Maine shares your habit of chewing his lower lip when deep in thought. Last week, as we mended socks by firelight, he pressed a dog-eared copy of Leaves of Grass into my hands. “For your particular friend,” he said, eyes glinting. The book lies now beneath my bedroll, its pages whispering truths Mr. Whitman dares not shout.

Do you recall the maple grove behind your schoolhouse? How we’d carve equations into bark, our fingers grazing as chalk dust settled like snow? Yesterday, foraging for kindling, I stumbled upon a twin to that tree. Its roots cradled a brook, and in the ice-flecked water, our reflections shimmered—not as scholar and soldier, but as Adam and his shadow. I knelt till the cold bit my bones. Madness, perhaps, but in that ache, I felt divine.

The men speak little of affection, save for sweethearts in daguerreotypes. Yet I’ve seen glances that linger over shared hardtack, palms pressed too long during the surgeon’s grim work. When fever took young Carter last month, it was Lieutenant Ames who cradled his head, who clipped a curl no mother will ever receive. We buried them side by side beneath a persimmon tree. No psalm was read, but the silence sang clearer than any hymn.

My tentmate, a preacher’s son from Indiana, reads your letters aloud when the shakes take me. He marvels at your “philosophical bent,” unaware how I transpose each word—Thomas becoming my dear companion, longing masquerading as fraternal regard. Even now, I trace the seal’s wax, imagining it bears the faintest impression of your cheek.

We assault the ridge at first light. Bragg’s boys are dug in like ticks, their sharpshooters picking off our pickets. I should pray, but find myself reciting your ode to the Susquehanna’s autumn hues—the crimson maples, the heron’s patient vigil. If I fall, let them find this letter nestled in Whitman’s pages. Let the bloodstains confess what my tongue never could: that I loved you more fiercely than any banner, though only twilight granted us leave to meet.

Yours in life and beyond,

Samuel

The Scholar’s Reply

Harrisburg, Pennsylvania

December 5, 1863

Beloved Samuel,

Your letter arrived on the first snowfall, the parchment stained with mud and what I pray is tobacco. I read it thrice—once at my desk, once beneath the walnut where we debated Plato, and once by candlelight, my fingers tracing every hurried glyph. How cruel that winter’s hush should cradle such tumult!

The students ask after you. Young Clara—remember her lisp?—insists you’re a knight errant battling Southern dragons. I’ve not the heart to correct her. At night, I transcribe your words into cipher, a code only we might parse. The original burns in the stove, ash rising like the ghosts we might yet become.

Mrs. Hennessy brought news of Chattanooga, her voice quavering as she listed the dead. I smiled, served her elderberry wine, and recited Cicero until she forgot her ghoulish errand. Let the vultures feast on sorrow; this house holds fast to hope.

Yet doubt gnaws. Last Tuesday, Mayor Winslow’s son was tarred and ridden from town for “unnatural inclinations.” I stood among the mob, my fists clenched till nails drew blood. How easily that could be us, Samuel! When they dragged him past the schoolhouse, our eyes met—his brimming with terror, mine with complicity. I vomited in the privy afterward, bile and shame intermingled.

The church bell tolls for Sherman’s march. Ladies’ Aid Society quilts pile high, each stitch a silent plea. I linger after meetings, decoding casualty lists like a scholar parsing Aeschylus. Young Widow Carter—her babe unborn when Henry fell—now teaches Sunday school. We never speak your name, as if silence might armor you against Minie balls.

Enclosed find a sprig of ivy from the schoolhouse wall. You once called it a pest, but mark how it clings! Let it remind you, my soldier-scholar, that love roots deepest where the world denies it soil. Write when you’re able, but fret not for my solitude. Whitman keeps me company, his verses a mirror to our own:

“The press of my foot to the earth springs a hundred affections, They scorn the best I can do to relate them.”

When peace comes—as it must—meet me in the maple grove. We’ll carve new equations into bark, our sum greater than war’s wretched arithmetic.

Yours in defiance and devotion,

Thomas