Person:Elisha Wells (1)

AS THE YEAR 1863 was coming to an end, Elisha Wells was a 33-year-old farmer with a wife, Maria, and seven children between ages 1 and 13, living in the Suffolk County hinterland in Northville. He was far from the Civil War that was raging many miles to the south.Suddenly, without telling Maria, Wells up and went to war.Out of this experience came a stream of letters that present the story of a man at war both with the rebels and with himself. It's not completely clear just what demons were at work that drove Wells out of Northville, but his letters hint at something his descendants don't want to talk about on the record: Wells had a drinking problem, and his life seemingly was coming unsprung. Writing to Maria from Virginia on Jan. 7, 1865, almost a year after he enlisted, Wells poured out his soul to the wife who had borne seven children in 14 years, and who would give birth four more times after the war. Spelling and grammar appear here as in the original letters:"I don't know but it was the best thing I could do coming to the war. I have had a chance to live in peace & to think of my past life and to repent & I hope I am a better man than I was when I went away. I never should went off but I could not take any comfort in anything I undertook to do and I had nothing I could call my own ... & I had no peace ... I thought I had better get away."In his letters, now owned by the Suffolk County Historical Society in Riverhead, Wells wrote to Maria with love and affection, and he sent her money from his pay regularly by Adams Express. His sentiments reached their fullest expression on Aug. 16, 1864, when he began his letter: "Dear beloved handsome pretty sweet honey comb of a wife you don't know anything about how I love you & I did not know myself before. If I ever get home again we will enjoy that love."Wells lit out for New York City on Dec. 31, 1863, and on Feb. 5 enlisted as a private for a three-year term in the 2nd Regiment of Connecticut Heavy Artillery Volunteers. This was late in the war, which began in the spring of 1861; the great turning-point battle at Gettysburg had taken place the previous summer. But there was plenty of action left in 1864 for Wells. A massive Union advance on Richmond began May 4. As much as Wells itched to get into battle, he also thought that he might not come out alive."I sit down hurriedly to drop you a few lines to let you know that we start for Richmond tomorrow morning at daylight," Wells wrote Maria on May 17. "Probably it will be the last time you will hear from me. Farewell dear wife. If nothing happens I will write again."At Cold Harbor, Va., Wells went into battle for the first time."Lee with his army has made a desperate stand & there is one of the most desperate battles going on that is on record & the Lord of Battles only knows how it will end," he wrote on June 3. "... I tell you it is a solum thing to behold. Well men stricken down in a moment heads off legs arms & all torn to peaces."By June 10 things had quieted down. "Down here I have seen awful fighting," he wrote. "I may never see such again. I have actually walked on the dead rebbels. I tryed to keep off our own boys. & yet it done me good to see fowl trators fall beneath the hand of vengence."On Sept. 19, Wells was in the thick of a hard-fought, bloody battle outside Winchester, Va., in the Shenandoah Valley. In an undated letter to Maria, he tells an anecdote that depicts Gen. Philip Sheridan with a lot less bravado than historians usually assign him. It also attributes to Sheridan the terse command -- "Go in" -- that Gen. Ulysses S. Grant three days earlier had given to him: "The 19th Corps broke & run & the rebs after them. Our 2nd brigade was on the left. Sheridan comes running up to General Upton our general & says the day is lost. No says Upton, let me take in my small brigade composed of the 2nd Conn., 95th Pennsylvania and 121st N.Y. a regiment raised on Long Island and see what they will do. Go in says Sheridan. The order was steady forward double quick & in we went and licked them & drove them back. Sheridan comes riding up & says give em hell boys you have got them now."Through the fall the fighting continued. On Nov. 6, Wells wrote to Maria from Cedar Creek in Virginia. He seemed surprised after the battle to see that he was still alive. "It is a solom site to see a battle and the dead and wounded strued on the ground after it is over. And it is strange to think that I had not been one."By midwinter, the war had quieted down for Wells. On Jan. 7, 1865, with Lee's surrender only three months away, Wells thought of a promise he had made to his family: "In most all your letters you say I must be a good boy and not drink anything that will make me drunk! My dear I have not bought a glass of rum since I enlisted & I don't want any."The major fighting for Wells was over. But, full of bitterness at treatment he had received at home, apparently from his father, he wrote angrily to Maria on Jan. 26: "It is a pitty that the rebbel army couldent go through Long Island once. Then I guess some folks would find out something."Wells was discharged Aug. 18, 1865. He returned to his wife and children and to the farm that had been in the family since it was allotted to William Wells, one of the Southold founders, in 1640. Elisha Wells died in 1895.Epilogue"In one of his letters he told of orders among others to double quick step," Ida Wells Provost, his youngest child, wrote in 1948. "Often for us he would double quick step across our kitchen floor in the house on West Lane. It was a large kitchen quite some longer than wide. We loved his stories." www.newsday.com/community/guide/lihistory/ by George DeWan