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Search - Dear Belle: Letters from a Cadet and Officer to His Sweetheart, 1858-1865
Dear Belle Letters from a Cadet and Officer to His Sweetheart 1858-1865 Author:Tully McCrea, Cecile Johnson, Bruce Catton Tully McCrea's guns faced Pickett's charge at Gettysburg. This book is his personal story of West Point and the war years, largely as told in his own words to the girl back home. It is a unique record of cadet life and front-line action with the Army of the Potomac, at Antietam, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg and elsewhere. As such, it is ... more »of great interest to Civil War buffs and of prime importance to serious scholars of the period. Beyond that, it carries an undertone of delicate romance, half-acknowledged, bitter-sweet, ending in abnegation and long memories--a human story that many readers will find deeply touching.
McCrea went to West Point from a small Ohio town and stepped into a different world. His letters to Belle, written with almost weekly regularity, told her all that he saw in this new life. They included vivid detailed pictures of the curriculum and the teachers; the bleakness of hard work and strict discipline, only occasionally lightened by the excitement of a dance, sleigh ride or a fire in a neighboring village; the strange and strict code of honor that forbade theft or lying, but permitted much sharp practice on examinations; the fascinating, mercurial personality of McCrea's roommate, George Armstrong Custer, here viewed in fresh perspective; the coming of secession and war, and their effects on the cadets.
The wartime letters, written from camp or from the battlefield itself, continue a story, with intimate details of many a weary march and hard-fought engagement, and with candid thumbnail appraisals of such leaders as McClellan, Hooker, Meade, and the dashing Custer--whom McCrea called "a gallant soldier, a whole-souled generous friend, and a might good fellow."
The McCrea letters, over two hundred in number, have never before been used by any scholar. They were made available for this book by their present owner, McCrea's grand-niece Mrs. George Stanley Smith. They are here presented in a topical arrangement (chronological for the war years), with the editor's running text providing a historical framework and supplying the background that a modern reader needs for their full appreciation.« less