Letter to Soldier :: War Writing Papers

Letter to Soldier When faced with obstacles in life, people rely on their family and friends to give them support and encouragement. Sometimes, family members can seem harsh and unkind, but their intentions are sincerely good. Mothers will always disapprove of their son’s choice in girlfriends, but she will shed tears of joy at the wedding. Fathers will never like their sons-in-law, but they still tell their daughters that they will find the perfect man. Thirty-year old men will always be treated as if they were ten by their mothers. It has been this way for centuries in our society. A letter from a worried mother to her son, a soldier in the Confederate Army, proved this point. While this young man was, by that time’s standard, an adult, his mother still felt the need to keep her child safe. Aside from the content and ideas relayed in the letter, the document itself is a powerful item from American in history. Reading about a person or event in history is a good experience; a powerful experience, however, is to hold history in your hand and listen to people in their own words. Discovering the story and history behind this letter proved to be even more rewarding than holding and reading the letter itself. Expecting to find a few, uninteresting facts about this Civil War Era, I found that this letter brought to life five southern boys that were thrown off the farm and into battle. The letter also helps to illuminate the way a society lived while it told a story of a mother, her sons, and several friends On January 6, 1863, a mother sat down and wrote her son a letter. The author of the letter was a forty-five year old woman named Kerney A. Stocks. She was writing to her son, John, who was a soldier in the Civil War. From what she mentioned in the letter, she was a very passionate woman. She made some very blatant remarks concerning her feelings toward her son’s behavior. For example, Mrs. Stocks says, â€Å"I feel [sort of] mad this morning because I did not get no letter from you yesterday,† expressing her displeasure to her son. Kerney Stocks was more than likely a middle class woman, since she could read and write.