Private Joseph P. Robinson sat under an oak tree and wiped the sweat beads from his forehead with the back of his sleeve. The humidity was unbearable. He laid out a sheet of paper, dipped his fountain pen into an inkwell, and began scratching out a letter home. “Headquarters, Army of the Potomac near Petersburg [Virginia], July 17, 1864.”
He paused and thought for a moment about what he wanted to say, then began writing. “My dear Mother…”
Over the next few minutes, he penned a three-page letter containing tidbits of news from the battlefield: he discussed the weather (“intense heat”); his health (“My health is pretty good considering, though I cannot say that I feel very strong—I suppose it is on account of the heat…”); and the triple execution he witnessed a few days before (“I saw three men hung the day before yesterday…”).
Robinson’s letter provides a fascinating look at the life of a front line soldier, including a glimpse at one of the darker aspects of the Civil War: judicial executions.
When he wrote this letter, Robinson had just returned from a trip to City Point—an important supply depot and Ulysses S. Grant’s headquarters during the Petersburg campaign. “I started very early in the morning,” Robinson explains, “as to escape from the intense heat.” The young private was talking about the weather, but his day trip to the supply depot may have provided an escape in more ways than one.
It had been an incredibly traumatic month for Robinson and his buddies in Company A. By the time he wrote the “My dear Mother” letter, his regiment, the 97th Pennsylvania Infantry, had seen over four weeks of action around Petersburg, Virginia. He witnessed death on and off the battlefield, including the hanging of three men who apparently could no longer stomach bloodshed.
A native of Chester County (located between Philadelphia and the Susquehanna River), Robinson had just over a month remaining in a four-year term that began with his enlistment on August 30, 1861. As a member of Company A, 97th Pennsylvania Infantry, he had survived nearly four years of intense combat, culminating in the back-to-back, epic battles of Cold Harbor (May 31-June 12, 1864) and Petersburg (June 15-18, 1864).
The 97th, like other battle units of the Civil War, suffered from the occasional desertion, which typically led to a court-martial and, following a guilty verdict, an execution. According to some sources, 147 Union soldiers paid the ultimate price for running away from their units. Others were hanged or shot for other offenses, such as crimes against civilians.
“I saw three men hung the day before yesterday—I think hanging is preferable to shooting, though I hope never to experience either,” Robinson quipped in the third page of his letter. Clearly, the horrors of war hadn’t dulled Robinson’s sense of humor, but his gallows humor hints at a dark reality: for combat veterans like Robinson, judicial hanging wasn’t an altogether rare sight. He may have made light of the triple hanging for the same reason a medical examiner might make light of something during an autopsy: sometimes, humor is the best medicine and an excellent insulator against a morbidly uncomfortable scene. Or, Robinson may have become desensitized to the gruesome sound of the drop and the sight of a man squirming at the end of a hemp rope like a fish on a line. Because, he had seen many hangings—as well as shootings—during his service.
He was most likely present at the hanging of a black private named William Johnson. Johnson was a deserter who allegedly attempted a sexual assault against a civilian. It was a crime that would cost him his life. On June 20, 1864, Johnson dropped from the gallows in full view of the Confederate battery.
The Union military wanted to send a powerful message that such conduct would not be tolerated, so they left his body swinging for awhile. The grand plan backfired. After the execution, rebels paraded their slaves past Johnson’s dangling corpse in an attempt to dissuade them from fleeing across enemy lines.
As he inked his farewell, Private Robinson may have been thinking of serving out his term in peace. “Five months from today, he wrote, “and I shall be on my way home.” Although it may have seemed like months away, his enlistment was up in five weeks, not months.
Robinson’s last month of service would not be a quiet one. Two weeks after his letter home, Company A took part in the disastrous “Battle of the Crater.” On July 30, Union engineers detonated 8,000 pounds of gunpowder stashed in a mine shaft excavated beneath rebel lines. The blast blew a massive canker sore in the earth and instantly killed 278 Confederate soldiers, but the engagement became a debacle for the North when Federal soldiers rushed into the crater. Quickly recognizing an opportunity to shoot fish in a barrel, opportunistic rebels lined the crater rim and decimated the Union forces.
Robinson survived the epic failure at the Crater and mustered out of service exactly a month later, on August 30, 1864.
About the item: approximately 7” by 9” and handwritten on thick, lined paper containing a stamp of the paper manufacturer, SOUTHWORTH CO., PHILA. Portions of the letter are difficult to read, so large scans have been provided in case the reader would like to investigate further. There may be additional clues about Private Robinson in these difficult-to-decipher portions, and Dark Corners of History is interested in hearing reader comments about the contents of this letter.
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