By Victor Greto
As David Lilley of Newark rested near the banks of the James River outside of Richmond, Va., in the heat of a Sunday afternoon, he wrote a letter to his sister, Annie.
Dear Sister
I Received your Letter to day and was glad to hear from you
we have Been fighting for the Last four days the looss on our Side has Been very heavy I suppose we have lost in killed and wouded nearly twenty thousand
our Rigment Lost one killed and several missing I have escaped un hurt So far our Company had too taken prisoners the men fell Dead Like wheat Before the Cradle
I have not much time to write at present or I would write you a Long Letter tell mother and all the Rest that I am well
the rebels fights well But we were victorious at every point although they out numbered us our officers Deserve great praise for their Bravery it is hard to tell which will Come out Best at the Last
tell alfred that I Say for him never to enlist while the world Stands tell him that is my Last advice to him
we have had nothing to eat for too or three days nor no water to Drink this is a terable time indeed when we Lay down we dont know whou will get up a live I was walking with a man when he had his head knocked clean off
For more than a week, and ending several days before he wrote the letter on July 6, 1862, in what became known as the Seven Days Battles of the Peninsula Campaign, Lilley had fought in Delaware’s 2nd Regiment for the Army of the Potomac under Maj. Gen. George McClellan.
The collection of 38 of Lilley’s Civil War letters is one of three sets recently digitized and made available online to scholars and the public by the University of Delaware.
Aside from Lilley’s letters, a collection of 43 written by Edward A. Fulton to his mother, who lived in Wilmington, and a collection of letters, poems and essays written by Capt. Thomas M. Reynolds to his sweetheart, Louisa J. Seward also are available online.
Lilley and Fulton survived the war. Reynolds died June 20, 1864, from wounds he received two days earlier during the Battle of the Wilderness near Richmond.
Lilley, who was born in Cecil County, Md., in 1842, came from a family of of 12 boys and girls. They moved to Newark when he was a child.
He didn’t go to school for very long. He went to work for his father, who dug wells and was a quarryman.
After volunteers for the Union were called for in 1861, he enlisted at the age of 19.
If as a border state Delaware held ambiguous political loyalties toward the United States during the Civil War of 1861-1865, Lilley did not.
One of the more remarkable traits that one gleans from reading Lilley’s barely literate writing is his consistent belief in the cause of the Union, despite feeling homesick.
was taking a walk this morning down along the Banks of the River, begins one letter. But nothing Seemed like home although the air was pure and every thing looked fresh and nice
But I Could easy tell it was not my native land houses and gardens are all destroyed every thing is desolate the Soldiers say they are tired of it and So they well might Be for I tell you there is no one knows how the amry of the potomac suffers But them Selves
I am not tired of it yet Beneath my Coat Beats a hearts that will Shall never waver or yet Become disloyal I wish I was able to Comman an army. I only ask to see this was over and see my friends again. I hop I Shall Be able to do that much
Say what you please tis hard Life But we will Bear it
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The letters are only the first of more digitization being planned, said Mary Durio, head of preservation department at UD’s library.
“We want to get rolling and do more digitization, and getting the first part of the Civil War project up gets the rest going better,” she said.
Other documents soon to be put online include a collection of Lincoln documents, which contains a signed copy of the Emancipation Proclamation.
“Digitization is all about access,” Durio said. “It helps researchers at a distance. It’s good for preservation because if we can produce high-quality reproductions, people may not have to handle them. It keeps the documents from normal wear and tear.”
The collections’ accessibility already has excited those who have been fascinated by the War Between the States for many years.
“To put these collections on the Web is good,” said Thomas J. Reed, a Widener law professor who leads the Delaware Civil War History project, a group founded in 1955.
“You don’t see these very much because very few of them are published.”
Although diaries and letters can be boring at times, Reed said, “In them you learn of relationships with people at home, feelings about the war, understanding war aims.”
What you don’t get is context.
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During the Civil War, Delaware was the epitome of political ambiguity: a “border state,” or “loyal slave state,” it did not follow its southern neighbors out of the Union.
Yet nor did it care all that much for Abraham Lincoln and the cause of the Union. During the 1860 election, Lincoln came in third with all of 3,811 votes. Democrat James Breckenridge received twice as many votes. Lincoln also would lose the 1864 presidential election in Delaware to Democrat George McClellan, whose notorious dithering as a general probably cost the Union an early victory over the Confederacy.
Sentiments among Delaware’s 112,000 people ran the gamut from abolitionists who worked the underground railroad to slave owners who actively helped the Confederacy.
Of 19,000 African Americans in the state in 1860, 1,900 were slaves. There were some domestic slaves in New Castle, as well as slaves who worked the peach orchards near Middletown.
But the bulk of slaves worked below the Chesapeake & Delaware Canal, which had been constructed a little more than three decades before the outbreak of the war.
While the center of Confederate sympathy lay in Laurel and Bridgeville, New Castle County — which had most of the wealth and half of the state’s population — was passionately for the Union.
And that included Newark’s David Lilley.
Nearly two weeks before the end of the Peninsula campaign, Lilley wrote his sister about the opening Battle of Fair Oaks the first of the Seven Days Battles.
…yesterday was a very Stiring day indeed. early in the morning the Rebels made their appearance in Large numbers first Driving in our pickets and then attacked on of our Batteries But they were Repulsed. But they Still made it their Buisness to try it a gain But in no Case Could they Suceed
our Rigment was not ingaged But onne of our men while in the act of loading his gun was Shot in the hand By a spent Ball our Loss is Small the Rebels is Sad to Be Large you would not Believe me when I Say the Roar of the Cannon Shook the earth But it Certainly did I never heard the Like Before it was awful indeed my Dear Sister…
I will Be So glad to See you when I get home I will tear you up often times I think of you and the Rest of the dear ones at home But Still I am not Sory that I left
I have a great Regard for my home and Contry and we are almost shure to win the this victory and this will Be the last we will have to fight
Russ Smith, the superintendent Fredericksburg/Spotsylvania military park in Virginia, first read David Lilley’s letters three years ago while researching Delaware’s 2nd regiment.
He did it the old-fashioned way. He went to the library and handled the letters himself.
For Smith, like many Civil War buffs and historians, “it was a personal thing.”
One of Smith’s ancestors, James L. Letherbury, had been a lieutenant in Delaware’s 2nd regiment.
“The regiment trained in Wilmington and was assigned to the eastern shore and then with the Army of the Potomac,” Smith said.
Aside from the Seven Days Battles, the regiment fought in some of the greatest battles of the war, including the bloodiest one, Antietam — a qualified “victory” that Lincoln used to issue the Emancipation Proclamation — and the greatest battle and turning point of the war, the 3-day Battle of Gettysburg in July 1863.
“They were called the crazy Delawares, because they kept charging and wouldn’t retreat,” Smith said.
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Lilley’s missives reflect a stoic inner strength that evidently supported that “crazy” passion for the Union that fighting in the regiment engendered.
One month after Gettysburg, Lilley, describing the death of a couple of deserters, used it as a pretext to reaffirm his faith in the cause of the Union.
Every thing is going on nice Since generall Mead took Command of this army his is a man that Believes in thorough dicipline
he had too deserters Shot to day I say them Shot my Self they were shot right out in front of our regiment they took it very Cooly they died like heroes they never fluched But Stood up Erect and were Shot down like dogs
I Pittied them But Annie they knowed they were doing wrong they derserted three times and Come out the fourth time as Substitutes geting a large Bounty Every time did they not deserve what they got I Come without Bounty and never expect to get any
But I am willing to Stay my time out for I tell you Annie this war is getting to Be a mighty desperate thing for it needs all the able Boddies we have got to Suppress this rebellion
I have always done my part and I always will I am able I have followed our Colors through thick and thin I have Spent too yoears in teh Service I Cant Say that I am tire of it yet
I have participated in Severl hart fough Battles I have Seen men fall all around But I have never yet felt discouraged and I Believe if I am Spared to See this war over or my time out I mean the war was Still going
I Believe that I would enlist again when I was at home I had Better vituals and Better Beds to Sleep in than I have now But I am Equally as happy now as I was then….
Lilley’s personal life may have remained lonely long after the war.
He wrote to his sister about a girl, but nothing seems to have come of the relationship after the war.
I have not much Spare time or else I would write more than I do, he wrote to Annie on July 24, 1862.
it is a pleasure for me to write when I have time and things to write with you can tell By this letter that my pen and ink is Both Bad But never the less I much try and Still write a little
Annie I got the Stamp that you Sent me But I am going to Send this letter with out one
I am going to write to my gal and i dont like to Send her a letter with out a Stamp
I Suppose if I would Send her one with out one She woud not have me for after this war is over
I think that I am intitled to a wife and if I Cant get a one any other way I will get uncle Sammy to get one for me.
Evidently Uncle Sam couldn’t help Lilley with his love life after he was discharged from the service in 1864.
But that’s only inference based on newspaper accounts of how he died less than 23 years later.
On Tuesday, Feb. 15, 1887, at 12:30 p.m., the perennially single 45-year-old David Lilley walked along one of a series of B&O and Pomeroy railroad tracks in Newark when he heard the sound of a train whistle.
He misjudged on which set of tracks the train was coming.
The train crushed one of his feet as he jumped off the tracks at the last second.
Later that afternoon, two doctors amputated the foot. Nine days later, on Feb. 24, Lilley showed symptoms of blood poisoning and lockjaw. He died at 11 a.m.
Proving itself only a “first draft of history,” the newspaper that reported his death, the “Every Evening” of Wilmington, wrote that Lilley was “a sober and industrious citizen of Newark all his life,” was unmarried, and was survived by four brothers and three sisters.
The newspaper did not acknowledge David Lilley’s Civil War service.
And it spelled his name wrong.