Voice from the Past: A Loud Rap on the Door

Good morning! Today’s Voice from the Past comes from a December 22, 1861 letter from Elisha Franklin Paxton to his wife.

And if you hear a loud rap at the door some night before long, you need not think robbers are breaking in, but that your own dear husband is coming home to see wife and little ones, dearer to him than everything else on earth.

Source: Elisha Franklin Paxton, “Diary of Elisha Franklin Paxton, December, 1861,” in Memoir and Memorials: Elisha Franklin Paxton, Brigadier-General, C. S. A., Composed of His Letters from Camp and Field while an Officer in the Confederate Army edited by John Gallatin Paxton (New York: Neale Publishing Company, 1905).

Image Credit: Harper’s Weekly, December 26, 1863.

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