ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a letter written by Oliver Wendell Holmes to his father, dated December 10, 1862. As the Civil War progressed, the division between home-front and battlefront inevitably widened, since despite the close ties between them, the soldiers' experiences could only ever be imperfectly understood by non-combatants. The growing enthusiasm for emancipation at home was not always matched by those fighting, and dying to effect it in the field. Holmes was not unusual, at this stage in the war, in expressing some doubts about the likelihood of Union victory. But, it is clear from this letter to his father that Holmes' early abolitionist enthusiasm was being replaced by a sense of duty, a shift that may have owed something to the political make-up of his regiment as much as to any particular disillusionment with the war.
