Fantastic Confederate Civil War letter written by 16 year-old Seaborn Montgomery, Jr. of Americus, Georgia. Seaborn was a cadet at the Georgia Military Institute (GMI) in Marietta when Sherman’s army occupied the town. The young soldier was among the GMI cadets who were hastily pressed into Confederate army service under Victor Eugene Manget, their French professor. The cadets fought at the Battle of Resaca before getting assigned to duty guarding a railroad bridge over the Chattahoochee River. Some of the cadets served in the trenches before Atlanta but after Atlanta fell, they joined other Confederate regiments who resisted Sherman’s March to the Sea. The empty campus of GMI was burned by Sherman’s troops when they started on their march in mid-November 1864.
Seaborn wrote this letter to his younger sister, Julia, while stationed at West Point. In addition to general news from camp, the cadet waxes poetic about his sudden transformation from cadet to soldier, of which he is quite proud:

“Yesterday I bade father goodbye. Today he will be welcomed home with glad hearts. I would like for it to be me but my bleeding country needs my services and for her I am willing to forego every pleasure—to sacrifice every idol. “I am in my country’s defense,” is a thought which inspires my youthful heart with the fiery ardor of one much my superior in years and experience. I glory in going a soldier and I would I were at the front today braving the battle’s fury and the terrors of death. I know my fall would cause pain to the tender hearts of my mother and loving sister, yet it would [be] in a cause which none should be ashamed of.”

Unfortunately, Seaborn would indeed fall. He was among several GMI cadets who died of disease during the war. According to his gravestone, he expired in February of 1865 while home on furlough.

[Civil War, Union, Confederate, Robert E. Lee, Ulysses S. Grant, U.S Grant, Abraham Lincoln] [Stonewall Jackson, John Hunt Morgan]