The following letter was written by Thomas Ebenezer Turner (1843-1927), the son of Moses Turner (1821-1904) and Rebecca T. Pressley (1823-1903) of Lebanon, Boone county, Indiana. Thomas married Elizabeth Malcenia Stephenson (1845-1905) in August 1867. During the summer of 1864, Thomas served 100 days in Co. K, 132nd Indiana Infantry. He later became a Presbyterian clergyman.

From Thomas’s letter we learn that he was attending school at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana. According to their school archivist, Stephen E. Towne, in June 1863, just prior to the date of this letter, “amid a wave of organized and murderous draft enrollment resistance throughout Indiana and neighboring states, a large body of armed men accosted a draft enrollment officer in Indian Creek Township, in the southwest corner of Monroe County, and seized his enrollment lists. Military authorities sent a force of over one thousand troops—infantry, cavalry, and artillery—to Bloomington to arrest the perpetrators.  The troops billeted in the town among welcoming pro-war Republicans (town Democrats, many of whom had soured on the war effort, later complained that the troops had been drunk and disorderly) for several days and arrested more than a dozen men for draft resistance before marching into Greene and Sullivan counties to enforce the draft law. The violence of the war reached into every Indiana community.”

Thomas’s letter also speaks of Morgan’s raid through Southern Indiana and of the volunteers from Boone county who rode out after him but came home disappointed. “The boys were pretty smartly outed because they did not get a chance at him,” he wrote his friend.

Transcription

Northern Depot, Indiana
July 20th 1863

Friend Sally,

Your long looked for but welcome letter came to hand on last Saturday week. It found me well and enjoying myself in the happy land of Boone. I arrived home on the evening of the 4th from Bloomington in company with friend Weed. We left Bloomington on the evening of commencement day (July 2nd), came up as far as Greencastle Junction where we had to change cars, and behold! when we got there the train was gone. So we concluded it would not pay to wait there until next morning so we took it a foot, walked on till 4 o’clock the next morning, and having reached a station and being a little somewhat tired, we lay down on the platform and slept until a train came wizzing by and woke us. We again lay down and slept till 5 o’clock, when we got up, washed ourselves and started again. Went about three miles further to another station. We then had to wait an hour and a half before the train came along. You may be sure we were glad when it whistled. We reached Indianapolis about 11 o’clock and Samuel got on the Lafayette train and went out to Zionsville that evening. I (not being quite so homesick as him), waited until the next day, and went out to Lebanon.

There I found my old friends celebrating the fourth. Pretty near the first one of my acquaintances that I saw was Miss —— S——-. You had better believe I had a good time that afternoon. One Monday after the 4th, I went to work harvesting and have been busy all the time since.

There has been pretty stirring times here about old Morgan for a week or so back. There was a regiment of men left Lebanon on last Friday week, and returned on last Friday. There was a great many more wanted to go but the governor told them he could not supply them with arms, and so they stayed at home. Cousin Samuel went. He joined the home guards for sixty days and got a gun. The worst of it is they could not get a hold of the old scoundrel. The boys were pretty smartly outed because they did not get a chance at him. They caught some of his men.

It has been very dry here for some time. I believe about as dry as I ever saw it. We had a fine shower yesterday and it has been raining some this morning. We had considerable of frost last Wednesday night. It has ruined a heap of corn through here. Ours is as bad hurt or a little worse than any in the neighborhood.

Sallie, I think the Copperheads are just as mean as ever. I believe there is not so many of them in Boone as there are in Monroe, yet there are a few her. I think the time is not far distant when the most of them will have to pull down their heads and hide them in the grass “as it were.” Our cause seems to be prospering more favorably now than it has been doing for a good while.

I will send you a [School] Catalogue with this or in the same mail at least. Your advice concerning me getting the big head by going to College and forsaking Miss S—- simply because she cannot play on the piano and some others can, is very good but it is not needed in my case sa you supposed. You will know by my writing to you so soon after receiving your letter that I have not become so absorbed with Miss S—- as to forget to write to you. Perhaps I might have written sooner but I have had the sore eyes for a week that I could not see to read or write a letter. I got a letter last Saturday and had to get Eliza to read it to me. They are considerably better today.

I will have to close presently and go to work. This letter is pretty badly scribbled up but likely you can make out to read it. Our Catalogues are not as nice this year as common. They did not put the picture of the College in them and was always done before. They put my name in the 1st Year Prep. they reason they did it was because I had studied mathematics in the Freshman. I shall add no more except that I hope to hear from you a little sooner than before. — T. E. Turner