Letter to Mortimer Johnson

Scope and content:

Written from the Alms House in Richmond, Virginia. Letter regards Porter Johnson's decision to join the Army.

Language:

English

Other descriptive data:

Richmond
Feb 23d 1865

Dear Father
Your welcome letter was received last night. Uncle Porter had been here in the evening and told that he had received a letter from you stating that you had written me permission to resign. I am very much gratified at your kind concess[ion] in my wishes, and pleased to find that your own ideas correspond with mine on so important a subject.

I feel it due to myself as well as to you to state to you some of the reasons I have for leaving here and giving up the only opportunity which I shall perhaps ever have of getting an education. In the first place I am past nineteen years old and I think that it is my duty to be in the army. All who stay here after they become eighteen are generally considered shirkers. Then I do not think that the school will continue much longer than the first of April, for is it reasonable to suppose or can it even be expected that in this the death struggle of the Confederacy when every man woman and child should be at his or her post, when every nerve is to be strained to attain the object which we have so long fought for, that two or three hundred well drilled, able bodied men will be allowed to remain idle and inactive? I am sure the answer of any rational man will be No!

Then acting on the supposition that the corps will be ordered into service soon at all events, I think it advisable to resign while I can, and while I have the power to join any command that I think proper. A right granted all cadets resigning by order of the Sct War. And as for education, I look at it in this light. If we are subjugated the less education and refinement a man has the better for him, for the nearer the man approaches the brute the less feeling he has, and in the above contingency our condition will be little better than that of brutes. To look at the same question from another point, if the war continues, I will have to enter the army sooner or later. If I am killed education will profit me nothing, but suppose we gain our independence and I should be so fortunate as to survive the war, almost every youth in the Confederacy will be in my own lamentable condition without education or polish.

I think I shall hand in my resignation in about a week or so, I wish to finish analytic before leaving. I would like to join cavalry but do not see how I am to keep myself in horses.

Next I thought of mounted horse artillery but for the present I thought of accepting a second Ltc in the 2d Foreign Battalion, a position which I can get I think without much trouble. Uncle Porter advised me to take it at once as he thought it better to leave now if I could get a position than to wait a while and go as a private. There are several of my acquaintances in the same Battalion and one of my most intimate friends left the other day for a 1st Lt in the same. I cannot use the permission you sent me, it is right with the exception that you omitted to state that I resigned to enter the military service of the C.S. Please send me another with this addition.

Please excuse mistakes as I have written under difficulties and in haste.

From your affectionate Son,
Porter.

Subjects:

Virginia Military Institute—Cadet life—1860-1869
Correspondence

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