Man compiles last letters of Union soldiers

BELVIDERE, Ill. -- His name was Spencer Williams, and he served with the 3rd Tennessee Calvary in the U.S. Army during the Civil War.

"Think about that a minute," said Frank Crawford, one of Boone County's best known historians. "He was especially brave and resolute because of the fact that he was a Southerner. Everybody in his family and all his neighbors were Southern, and yet he supported the preservation of the Union."

Crawford tells Williams' story and others in his new book "Proud to Say I Am a Union Soldier: The Last Letters Home from Federal Soldiers Written during the Civil War, 1861-1865."

"I've been collecting these letters for about 10 years," said Crawford.

He gathered them at Civil War shows, from individual collectors and from places like the Vermont Historical Society and the National Archives.

The book's idea was suggested to him because, of all the books written about the Civil War, no one had done a book "about the men who didn't make it back," Crawford said.

After getting 75 letters, along with permission to use them, he narrowed them down to 21. Why 21? "I just thought that a 21-gun salute is the highest honor you can give a military man," he said.

Many died in combat; others in prisoner-of-war camps.

Williams, the Tennessean, was in two Confederate prisons, Cahaba and Andersonville, but survived 18 months as a prisoner. In his last letter home, written outside of Vicksburg, Miss., he wrote a long letter.

"He told about his 18 months of captivity, and how much weight he had lost," Crawford said.

"He was a typical young fellow, who was coming home and said, by God, I'm hungry," Crawford said. "In his last letter home, he says to his dad, 'kill a cow."'