ABSTRACT
On January 19, 1862, Rufus Cater of the 19th Louisiana Infantry escaped from his rambunctious comrades, found a quiet place outside of camp, and wrote to his cousin Fannie:
Tis pleasing in such an hour to withdraw from an uncongenial throng, from gibe and jest of rude soldiery and think undisturbed, calmly think of home, of absent friends. Tis sweet in such an hour to review the incidents of past life, to linger over the gay sunny shots in that varied landscape which remembrance displays before us. Tis sweet too to anticipate, to indulge in dreams in goldenwinged day-dreams of the future, presenting scenes of peculiar loveliness, pointing to days when the horrors of war shall have passed away. 1
Although Cater had yet to see combat, his new life in the military community and his growing realization of the harshness of war was enough to trigger a dramatic, multitemporal vision consisting of remembered past, lived present, and idealized future. Although not all Civil War soldiers were as poetic as Cater, many if not most experienced a similar moment at some point during their years in the ranks. The intensity of combat, the magnitude of the issues at stake, and the shakeup of society at every level combined to create intense moments that led both soldiers and civilians to refl ect on their immediate situations in relation to what had been and what was to come. There were particular moments, involving both location and activity, that were tailor-made for such refl ections. On the edge of a battlefi eld, the night before a fi ght; sitting around a campfi re on Christmas Eve; attending church without a husband; each of these activities, and the places where they occurred, led people to reexamine themselves and their roles in the unsettled world they were experiencing.
