Down the Rabbit Hole: Hunting an Original Letter

Historians must work with the primary sources. Those firsthand accounts are gold and depending on the circumstances, they can provide a mountain of insight. Letters and diaries are especially useful, where participants in events are more likely to share their most personal thoughts on a matter. Finding those sources can be difficult, but most nonfiction works include bibliographies and notations. While the average reader may gloss over such notes, these may prove the most important part of a book for a researcher. When I see a book in a bookstore, the first thing I do is look at the notes and bibliography. The more detailed, the more invaluable.

I have been doing a bit of research on the US Civil War’s 1862 Fort Henry/Fort Donelson campaign recently and went down one of those rabbit holes that historians tend to get caught in. It focused on tracking down a wayward letter Flag Officer Andrew H. Foote wrote to his wife Caroline. I found the letter in Foote’s most recent biography. It offers some great insight into his state of mind after bombarding Fort Henry and seeing a boiler explode from a Confederate shell that struck the ironclad Essex, scalding many sailors. It was written after Fort Henry’s capitulation and after his ships were ordered to redeploy to invest Fort Donelson. Here is the text in Foote’s biography referencing the letter to his wife:

“’I never again will go out and fight half prepared,’ he wrote. ‘Men were not exercised & perfectly green. The rifle shots hissed like snakes. Tilghman, well he would have cut us all to pieces had his best rifle not burst & his 128-pounder been stopped in the vent.’”[1]

A letter like this to a spouse that offers doubts about command and vulnerabilities of his ships is the sort of treasure-trove historians want. Thankfully, as would be expected from a large quotation, there is a notation attached to the letter’s text. Recognizing this letter’s importance, and wanting to see the whole thing, I turned to the endnotes and found the following citation: “Foote to his wife, 6 February, 1862, NA, RG 45, in Slage, Ironclad Captain, 176.”[2]

In part it was great information and in part it was not. The letter was dated. I knew the two parties, and saw it was in the National Archives catalog, Records Group 45. That is a massive collection however, and you cannot find a single letter without more detail on narrowing it down. But there was another element of the notation and I determined to do what all historians do at some point or another, trace the citations back to find the original source. I next turned to the other item listed in that notation, which I happened to have on my shelf already.

Picking up my copy of Jay Slage’s Ironclad Captain, I turned to page 176. There was the letter quoted once again:

“’I never again will go out and fight half prepared,’ he wrote. ‘Men were not exercised & perfectly green. The rifle shots hissed like snakes. [General] Tilghman, well he would have cut us all to pieces had his best rifle not burst & his 128-pounder been stopped in the vent.’”[3]

Same quote, word for word. That is great, as that means the quotation should be correct. I checked the notation attached to it, which read: “Foote to his wife, Feb. 6, 1862, RG 45, NA.”[4] Same citation as Foote’s biography, but no amplifying information on where exactly to find it.

Next, I began some online searches and after a while I found a link on the database JSTOR to an article written in 1971 that had some information about Foote’s letters in the National Archives. It said that “Many of his private letters are in the Manuscript Division, Library of Congress. An even richer collection of Foote’s personal correspondence is in the National Archives, buried beneath a mass of official reports.”[5] Even better, this statement had a footnote of its own stating “These manuscript letters are located in the file marked ‘Loose Papers, Mississippi River,’ Records Group 45, National Archives.”[6]

Being familiar with RG 45 (nothing but naval records), I had never encountered any ‘Loose Papers’ file before. I searched the National Archives catalog and found nothing by that sub-heading. Sometimes archives reorganize and rename their holdings within a major section, and it seems this is what happened here. Another search on some of my bookshelves and I did find a couple of other volumes that made mention of “Loose Papers, Mississippi River” in RG 45, but no amplifying information.[7]

I had just about given up hope and decided to move on, setting the hunt aside for a while. Continuing my examination of Forts Henry and Donelson, I eventually started looking at the Navy’s Area Files within the National Archives. This is a collection I always search when researching something Civil War naval related. Area 5 contains items related to the Mississippi River. Diving into the files I found what one might expect: telegraphs between commanders and Washington, reports, correspondence between Foote and Ulysses Grant and Henry Halleck, reports from ship captains to Foote. About 50 documents in, I found one that started with the words “My dear Wife…” and ended with the initials “AHF.”[8]

Could these Area Files be the Loose Papers referenced earlier? I checked the National Archives page for information about Records Group 45. Section 45.9 are collections called “’Area’ and ‘Subject’ Files” with specifics that the two sets are publication numbers M625 and M1091 respectively. The description notes: “Two collections of records, one arranged by geographic region (‘Area File’) and the other by topic (‘Subject File’), were created by ONLR staff during the period 1924-42 by combining loose documents obtained from departmental and other sources with original records in the Naval Records Collection.”[9] Combining loose documents, and one letter from Foote to his wife! This had to be it. I continued searching.

Then I found it! A letter from Foote to his wife, written February 6, 1862, in the Area File for the Mississippi River. The text quoted in both Foote’s and Phelps’s biographies was on the last of the four-page handwritten letter. I read the whole letter and there was much more to be found. For example, Foote mentions his strong faith, opening the letter with “Bless the Lord who has given me the victory after a horrible fight, of one hour and fifteen minutes. I earnestly almost agonized in prayer for victory this morning and we have it.”[10]

So, I have the elusive letter firsthand now! A small victory in a small battle for one historian. But it is the small victories in these small battles that bring source material to the forefront. There are big lessons here for both historians and those who like to read history. For historians, just remember that when you make notations and citations, other historians read these! The clearer the better and the more detail allowed the better. That can be tough, especially in books where publishers may want to save space by shortening notations. For those reading historical nonfiction work, remember that authors go through these dives for accurate sources literally thousands of times for each manuscript we produce, all in the hopes of producing a better final document for everyone to enjoy. Perhaps this can provide a little context and clarity on the effort put into every book on the shelf or magazine article.

Endnotes:

[1] Spencer C. Tucker, Andrew Foote: Civil War Admiral on Western Waters, (Annapolis, MD: Naval institute Press, 2000), 152.

[2] Ibid, 229.

[3] Jay Slage, Ironclad Captain: Seth Ledyard Phelps and the U.S. Navy, 1841-1864, (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1996), 176.

[4] Ibid, 416.

[5] James M. Merrill, “Captain Andrew Hull Foote and the Civil War on Tennessee Waters,” Tennessee Historical Quarterly, Vol. 30, No. 1, (Spring 1971), 84.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Chester G. Hearn, Ellet’s Brigade: The Strangest Outfit of the All, (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 2000), 273; Larry J. Daniel and Lynn N. Bock, Island No. 10: Struggle for the Mississippi Valley, (Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press, 1996), 183.

[8] Foote to Wife, March 19, 1862, Area 5, Mississippi River, Area File of the Naval Records Collection, 1775-1910, M625, RG 45, US National Archives.

[9] 45.9, Naval Records Collection of the Office of Naval Records and Library [ONLR], https://www.archives.gov/research/guide-fed-records/groups/045.html#45.9, Accessed July 7, 2023.

[10] Foote to Wife, February 6, 1862, Area 5, Mississippi River, Area File of the Naval Records Collection, 1775-1910, M625, RG 45, US National Archives.