Happy Valentine’s Day from The Civil War Monitor. We hope you enjoy this letter from Valentine’s Day, 1862.
Good morrow, ‘t is St. Valentine’s day
All in the morning betime.
And I a maid at your window
To be your Valentine.
Hail, noble lieutenant! I have received your letter written on board ship, and I am with you. Now that you are at work, if you see or do anything or hear something that will make a good letter to be published, send it to me and I think I can promise that it shall see the light. Thus you can do double work, and if you write well, perhaps you can get double pay. I shall exercise my discretion as to omissions. . . .
– Letter from Henry Brooks Adams to Charles Francis Adams, Jr., February 14, 1862 –
Source: Adams, Henry Brooks, “Letter from Henry Brooks Adams to Charles Francis Adams, Jr., February 14, 1862,” in A Cycle of Adams Letters, 1861-1865 (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1920).
Image Credit: Harper’s Weekly, February 16, 1861.
