Love and Constancy

 

A marriage is frequently a casualty of war.  After the Civil War, divorce rates in America climbed.   Physical and emotional injuries and disabilities, and the effects of long separation and hardship made returning to intimate relationships tremendously difficult.  Couples, especially those who were young or who had married in haste before the war, struggled with the stress.  Others suffered as soldiers who engaged in “horizontal refreshments” while at war contracted venereal disease which they brought home to their wives.

Throughout his letters, Alex Morgan reassures his wife of his love and loyalty to her and to their children.  The words which end so many of his epistles, “Believe me your own…” ask Fanny to have faith in him and in their relationship, despite their physical separation. They are a pledge of constancy and love.

But Alex Morgan’s deep affection for the woman he calls “the dear old girl of my heartis sometimes revealed in surprising ways.  His frank description of venereal disease and its painful, devastating effects is not only a description of his experience as a physician.  It is an acknowledgement that his own actions have consequences, and a declaration that his duty to wife and family precludes such recklessness.  Writing of one “dirty dog” who has simultaneously learned that he has contracted the disease and that his wife is coming to visit, Alex tells Fanny, “I am astonished to find how ignorant the mass of men are about these diseases, + their effects.”  Later, after several exchanges about the women of Mobile, Alabama where he is stationed, Alex says,

When Mundy + the rest of them tease you about my sweet hearts, do you just remember one thing.  My children are the only rivals you have or are likely ever to have in my affections.  If you + they were put in the ballance of my hearts, shall I say it?  I hardly know which side would go up, A good looking woman can be found easily enough, but it would be hard for me to get three more such brats any where.  are you jealous now; speaking of women + wives, my darling let me set your mind at ease on that question, as to my falling in love with any of these pretty Mobileans, or instituting inviduous comparisons between them + you the thing is simply ridiculous, + as far falling as you hint there is a possibility of, I am sure there is, but one chance, + that is for some good one to commit a rape on me,1 + I assure you that chance is a poor one. As for the regular whores I avoid them from habit as well as on principle.  I see enough of the fruits of associating with them every day to scare off any prudent man.  I was never in a whore house + dont think my curiosity will ever lead me into one.  I never want to see women as degraded as they must necessarily be.  I love my wife mother sisters + little daugther too well to be willing to see any thing that would lower the sex in my own estimation.  I know you are all virtuous + good + I want to think as many of your sex so as possible.  So my dear girl make yourself entirely comfortable on the wine + women question.  I give you my word of honour I neither drink or whore it.

Alex and Fanny actually seem to grow closer over the course of these letters, though not without mutual effort.  They apparently wrote often, but never often enough for a lonely and pensive soldier.   Writing to Fanny around the time of their wedding anniversary, Alex says,

You used to complain that I never wrote you a love letter when a girl.  You can now say I wrote you several after being married to you nearly twelve years….sometimes I wish with you that we could live over our married life again.  with our experience I think we could make a different affair of it.  Strange unfortunate creatures we are, not to learn until too late, that the present is all of time that is ours + our great duty to improve that to the best advantage. Is it in our stars or ourselves that it is so generally so with the human family?

Alex continues to reassure Fanny and to assert the value of love, loyalty, and duty throughout his letters.  Though he once teasingly asks if he will come home to find more children than when he left, Alex believes that his faithfulness will enable Fanny’s. Their mutual awareness of the temptations they face are revealed in Alex’s telling comparison with other well-known Confederate couples.

I have no fears of any thing of that sort.  It never crosses my brain for a moment that my wife is a woman too, when I hear of such terrible falls as Mrs Dr Peter made.  As long as I am true to her I never think she can fall, but love on as well as Wigfall dares to love Charlotte.  I reckon we are both satisfied on that score.

General Louis T. and Charlotte Wigfall were a colorful couple, and Charlotte appears to have been very dedicated to her hard-drinking and combative husband.  The story was told that she made her wedding dress into a Lone Star Flag for the1st Texas Regiment in which her husband served as Colonel. The flag was captured during the Battle of Sharpsburg after nine of the men who carried it had fallen.

Alex Morgan contrasts the wild, daring love of the faithful and patriotic Wigfalls with the shameful example of “Mrs. Dr. Peter” and General Earl Van Dorn. Van Dorn, a notorious womanizer, was eventually shot by a jealous husband, Dr. James Bodie Peters who claimed that Van Dorn had “violated the sanctity of his house.”2

For the Morgans then, love and patriotism intertwine. Constancy and loyalty not only hold a marriage together, but bind a nation.  A couple’s strength and the nation’s strength depend on faithfulness during adversity.  The bonds of duty and love must be honored in all circumstances.

You dont know how much it helps to reconcile me to all the hardships + privations of camp life, to be assured by yourself that you realise + appreciate the necessity of the course I am persuing, + that you are doing your part of the great work willingly + cheerfully like the sensible patriotic woman I know you to be.  I say go on my dear. I am proud of you.  I love you more to know that my wife would not have her husband lazing about home at such a time as this just for the pleasure of being with him or for what money he could make.  I wish you could get more of the “sisters” to think as you do + drive those able bodied lazy cowards out here to help us. 3

 

A year later Alex writes,

…I am sory to hear of the death of so many of my old friends good men.  But that is the way in a battle the best + bravest are lost whilst the worthless + cowardly dodge + escape.

Alex and Fanny Morgan reunited at the end of the war.  They returned to Texas and lived together to the end of their lives. Four more children were added to the family, and grandchildren and great-grandchildren followed them.  Through their descendants, the story of Alex and Fanny Morgan has been preserved and celebrated.  We hope you enjoy reading these letters.

 

 

  1. That is, “abduct me”
  2. Warner, Ezra, Generals in Gray: The Lives of the Confederate Commanders, Louisiana State University Press, 1959, p. 315.
  3. Alex Morgan, February 16, 1863.

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