The Ritchie Letters
Letters to and from home were important to troop morale. They let families know their loved ones at the front were still alive and well, and they conveyed support from those back home. Many of John Ritchie’s letters home to his father, uncle, sister, and brother-in-law have survived and they provide important context for the bland descriptions in the diary.
John Ritchie had passionate opinions about serving in the War with a Black Regiment and why it mattered. As the letters make clear, he had enlisted against his father’s wishes. Uriah Ritchie was a supporter of the radical Garrisonian branch of Northern Abolitionists. Most of them were non-resistants who disapproved of violence as a way of ending slavery. His son enlisted anyway because he felt that the creation of Black Regiments was a way to end slavery and demonstrate the equality of all human beings.
Ritchie hated the Army and the War, but he liked most of the men he served with and he believed in the cause that he fought for. He experienced appalling conditions. As the War dragged on and the Abolitionist officers he had enlisted with were killed, wounded, or transferred, he had to work with officers he judged incompetent or bigoted. He believed that the truth of the War would never make the history books, and he contributed his skill at record keeping to writing a history of the Regiment.
Although he could not express his opinions in his diary, he vented them in his letters home. He detested slavery and Southern slave owners and believed the Secessionists would not change even after the War was lost and they took the oath of allegiance. He delighted in the destruction of Southern plantations, the liberation of former slaves, and the advancement of three noncommissioned officers in the 54th to the rank of commissioned officers over the opposition of many Army Commanders. He distrusted Lincoln as a temporizer and spineless politician, but loathed McClellan and the Copperheads even more. His letters are important documents that frequently capture vignettes of the people and conditions he encountered and they make fascinating reading.
Emancipation Project 