Civil war, but the most private lives of his soldiers as well. As our first speaker amusingly calls it, the remarkable nightlife of civil war americans. What he is describing in that subtitle is their dreams. Not there conscious hopes, but their subconscious imaginings. And what they wrote home to describe in remembering what occurred during the precious hours during which the troops aged to catch the rest their rest in tents or in the field, drifting into dreams that expressed longing for home, their parents, their sweethearts, siblings, children and others, as you will hear. It is like our surveys. The other is the most intriguing. We all know how much lincoln loved shakespeare, including hamlet and its most famous be,oquy to be or not to even if he confided that he liked another soliloquy better. Within the poetry of course is this gorgeous and a telling phrase, to sleep perchance to dream. There is the rub, for in the dreams mayath, what come when we have shuffled off this mortal coil must give us pause. Lincoln himself, as im sure that you will hear from our speaker, not only dreamed some dramatic stuff himself, but enjoyed pausing and discussing, sometimes analyzing and torturing others about his dreams in front of just about anyone who would listen. So it is amazing to me that no one thought before to explore the phenomenon of civil war dreams, what was different about the dreamers of the 19th century and those 160 years later. So leave it to the next speaker to grab onto a terrific, untapped, if daunting subject and wrestle it into print with his usual exhaustive research, fresh analysis, and compelling narrative style. Jonathan w. White is back for his second Lincoln Forum appearance and we are delighted to welcome him from newport news, virginia. Newport news, virginia, home of the merrimack monitor, as i am sure most of you know. Also, the site of Christopher Newport university, where jonathan teaches american studies with a focus on lincoln, the civil war, and constitutional history. Although he definitely qualifies as one of the best of the new generation of lincoln historians, he has already been really unbelievably prolific, full of surprises, highly productive, highly capable, and truly inexhaustible. Those two little girls you have seen, i hope, running around, being well behaved, are his little girls. That means he has to be inexhaustible to juggle everything in his life, and he is a great dad which i am impressed with as well. Almost every subject he has tackled has resulted in a definitive study, from the John Merryman case of treason during the civil war of the 1864 , soldiers vote for president in bookxcellent emancipation, the union army, and the reelection of abraham lincoln. Wellites so fast and so that since we invited him to the forum he has already produced , another book, written with and holloway, coming out called our little monitor about the most famous attraction in his hometown. Those who have not seen it would be in for a great treat if you go down there to see the turrets from the monitor, dappled with the indentations from the shells that it took from the virginia. And the gun, both of which live in tanks in the nearby mariners museum. We have gathered here to hear jonathan explore midnight in america. Sleep,title, darkness, and dreams during the civil war. Here to discuss dreams during the civil war, please welcome newport news second most famous attraction, jonathan white. [applause] jonathan thank you so much. If you have never been to the mariners museum, i cannot recommend it enough. If you come visit, send me an email. I would love to meet you there. Not all at once, but it really is an incredible site to visit. I will show you a picture from inside the museum in a little bit. Secretary of War Edwin Stanton was running late on the morning of april 14, 1865. While lincoln and his cabinet members were sitting around at the white house waiting to begin their meeting, the president decided to kill some time by talking about his dreams. I had this strange dream again last night, he told them, and we shall, judging from the past, have great news very soon. Lincoln said that this was the usual dream he had preceding nearly every great event of the war. As the president was upbeat about this omen, generally the news has been favorable, which succeeded the dream he said, and the dream itself has always been the same. The secretary of the navy, gideon welles, asked him, what is the nature of this remarkable dream . And lincoln described it. He was on a ship, he said, some singular, indescribable vessel that was moving with great rapidity. Lincoln told the cabinet that he had this dream preceding the confederate attack at fort sumter, as well as before the battles of bull run, antietam, gettysburg, stones river, wilmington, and the surrender of vicksburg. Lincoln said he believed the dream portended some great news, hopefully involving general shermans army. Of course, this dream is still seen as remarkable today, because something great did happen soon thereafter. Lincoln was shot that night at fords theater and died the next morning. Sitting at the Cabinet Meeting that day, secretary wells did not think much about the dream, but a few days later, he remembered it and he wrote it down in his diary. This is what he wrote. Great events did indeed follow, for within a few hours the good and great agenda as well as , truly great man who narrated his dream, closed forever his earthly career. The story of lincolns dream began to circulate in the press, almost immediately after the assassination. It first appeared in the New York Herald three days later on april 18. When lincolns body arrived in philadelphia on april 22, the women of Saint Clements church had built an anchor that they placed next to his open coffin, and the anchor had white roses and violets on it. Next to the anchor, they hung a sign and it said this. Before any Great National event, i have always had the same dream. I had it the other night. It is of a ship sailing rapidly, abraham lincoln. By may, the dream was reported in newspapers as far west as san francisco. Clearly, the story captivated the american imagination, perhaps because it confirmed something supernatural or clairvoyant about lincoln. For lincoln, this was a positive dream. But the story as it continued to be retold in the wake of the assassination took on a remarkably darker hue. When welles recorded it, he quoted lincoln as saying that the vessel moved with great rapidity. He later amended his diary to say this. With great rapidity toward an shore. Te when he published his memories as a cabinet officer seven years later, he revised it again, now it read the ship was headed , toward a dark and indefinite shore instead of just an indefinite shore. It got darker and darker, and my apologies to those who are afraid of darkness. One account published in 1867 described lincolns vessel as swept along by an irresistible current toward a maelstrom from which it seemed no power could save her. Faster and faster the whirling , waters swept the ship toward the vortex. Until looking down into the black abyss, amid the deafening roar of the waves, and with the sensation of sinking down, down, down, an unfathomable depth, the terrified dreamer awoke. The dream continues to fascinate americans today, more than one 150 years after lincoln had it. And in Steven Spielbergs lincoln, daniel daylewis describes the dream as dark lonesome, as a bad dream in , which he said lincolns ship was moved by a terrible power, at a terrific speed. The dream has even appeared in childrens books. The story abe lincolns dream includes an artistic rendering. You can see the lightning as the ship travels through a storm over a choppy sea. Now, as frightening as the dream appears in this story for kids, i have some hope that it might inspire a Younger Generation of americans to appreciate our nations greatest president. I read lincoln stories like this to my older daughter almost one every night at bedtime, and i have to believe that she has been inspired by what she has heard. [laughter] now, charlotte was only 2. 5 years old when i took this picture. She is 4. 5 now and i know she will resent me someday for this, but i will get as much out of it as i can now. [laughter] i also have to tell you, when harold invited me to speak, he was insistent that i bring my family. Truth be told, i think it was he was a little more excited to see my two little girls here than me. I do not know if george is in the room, but charlotte might be angling for your job, so watch out. [laughter] the mariners museum, the propeller of the monitor. The girls, as mentioned, they will be running around the forum. And if you happen to see them misbehaving, i really do want you to let me know and i will make sure that they are punished appropriately. [laughter] back to the civil war. But i will let them hang there for a minute. Lincolns dream was a positive one, but it is often thought of as a bad dream, if not a nightmare. In this sense, i think the way that we remember lincolns dream reflects on how we often think about the psychological effects of the civil war upon soldiers and veterans. We tend to assume that most of soldiers were tormented by bad dreams of war. The reality though is that union and confederate soldiers dreamed more about home than anything else. Usually, these were Pleasant Dreams. Often they were comforting or romantic, sometimes they focused on the mundane, things that they missed from home. One soldier wrote to his mother, he wrote, i dreamed about the cheese which you wrote in your letter and how much i should like to taste it. Unfortunately for the soldiers, Pleasant Dreams of home could lead to disappointment after sunrise. Soldiers frequently wrote about dreaming that they were hugging or kissing their wives, and then they would wake up feeling angry that they were actually far away from home, that it had only been a dream and they were actually on the cold hard earth. I found one soldier from new york who woke up so angry to find that he was not really with his wife, that he went into baltimore and got drunk. As you might expect, feelings of guilt and deepseated anxieties often materialized in dreams. The most common thing i found to come out in dreams was a fear of marital infidelity. After all, you have young men who are far away on battlefields, far away from home. They might fear that their wives or sweethearts might leave them for a sneaky coward that had remained at home. What was remarkable in my research was how candid soldiers were in bringing up these fears of abandonment and adultery in their letters. But to soften the issue they would often couch it in a discussion of their dreams. Doing so, i think enabled them to maintain a certain level of intimacy with their wives, while still broaching a difficult subject. This is captain Thomas Jefferson hyatt and his wife. Thomas served with the 126 ohio. He wrote to her about several very clear dreams he had one night. First, i dreamed we had been married some years and the time had run out and we were about arranging another term. But then i dreamed you had abandoned me and formed an alliance with lieutenant watson of this regiment. Now at first, the captain said he was ok with the new arrangement, because he wrote, i suppose i was free to go where i chose. But soon he began to feel badly , and he said i could not think of the separation. In his dream, he said that his wife seemed offish and he grew jealous of how she looked at lieutenant watson. Eventually, he awoke and was glad to find it was actually only a dream. These kinds of dreams were ubiquitous. In my research i found union and , confederate soldiers who have these sorts of dreams that when they go home, their wives ignore them or treat them coolly. Sorry, i missed my spot here. On cspan, how does that happen . [laughter] bad dreams of home like this often resulted from lack of correspondence with loved ones. I could not find a photo of this soldier, but i found his grave and i suppose it might be fitting for his story. Miles butterfield was from wisconsin and he had not gotten a letter from his wife for about two months. He was upset, so he wrote a letter to her saying, you need to write more often. A 12page long letter. And he began to describe a very strange dream he said that he could not get out of his head. He dreamt he got out of the service and went home, back to wisconsin, and when he saw his wife on the street she refused to talk to him. Eventually he learned that she did not want to live with him anymore and she said, by the way, get all your furniture out of the house. He pleads with her but to no avail, so in his dream he walks around town and he runs into an old friend who says, your wife does not want to live with you anymore because i have been living with her for the last three weeks. By the way, i am not the only guy. So butterfield goes back to his wife, says i can forgive you, please take me back. She says no and she gets on a train and leaves town. At this point, suicidal thoughts started flooding his brain. He dreamt he went down to the train station and laid down on the tracks and he said, i was going to let the cars run over me, for now i have nothing to live for. After several more pages of this vivid description, he then wrote again, would you please send me more letters. Clearly a lack of communication from home was having a destructive effect on the soldiers psyche. Other soldiers had even more violent dreams about adultery, some of which like butterfields involved their wives with more than one man. This is william hardy, he served in a mississippi regiment, and in september 1861, he had a dream about his wife sally and he wrote to her about it. He said, i dreamt i came home and you received me cruelly cooly. He watched her get into a buggy with a young man and they left in a gay manner. He said, i fell into a party and he saw her in a fine glee now entertained by two nicelooking derailment nice looking gentlemen. He said, my heart sunk into and tears gushed from my eyes. She chastised him and returned to her two boyfriends. At this point, hardy wrote, i became enraged and i got my doublebarreled shotgun, heavily loaded, and after killing both the young men, i drew a dagger and was determined to terminate your life and my own with the same knife at the same time. But before he could execute this horrible deed, he awoke. He wrote, my mind was contorted. My whole physical frame convulsed and i almost crazy. Only after he had become convinced it was a dream, did he finally relax. This terrible dream to having heard that one of his comrades wives had been unfaithful. He said he was tired from a long and tedious drill. These kinds of dreams of infidelity i think reveal a remarkable amount of honesty that existed between husbands and wives when they were so far apart during the war. Now the dreamers might have been trying to compel their wives to remain faithful, sort of an unsophisticated attempt at reverse psychology. But i think something more than manipulation was going on in the dream reports. There is an irony, as the soldiers and their wives were experiencing severe doubts about their partners faithfulness, they still felt close enough to share their most intimate insecurities. And this is a photo that i love. I am not sure if you can make it out. This guy is pretending to be asleep, so he wanted a photograph made of him pretending to be asleep. If you look closely in the background, you can see a sort of spirit image of his wife superimposed over him. For this soldier, i think he wanted to make a photograph that would show his wife he was still thinking about her from the battlefield, even while he slept. Along these lines, of course soldiers didnt dream of romance did dream of romance in fantasy, and not all of their dreams were monogamous. This is confederate soldier alexander paxton of the fourth virginia infantry. I just learned before the session there is a descendent of a soldier from the fourth virginia here. And paxton kept a remarkable dream journal during part of the civil war. He wrote about a number of girls in the journal. One night, he dreamed of visiting miss sally standing on the porch, he wrote. I cried out to her, here comes your sweetheart. She ran in the house. Met me at the door. We went in and was having a nice time when i awoke. It was all a dream. Two days later, he dreamed about a different girl. Suddenly miss kate came in looking beautiful as an angel. I spoke to her. She congratulated me on being married. I told the miss she was mistaken, but if she was willing, i would soon be. Four days later, he dreamt he was about to pop the question to miss frances, and incidentally when he woke up he could not remember what her answer was. [laughter] now, most soldiers were modest, even shy when describing romantic dreams to their wives and sweethearts. This is confederate surgeon george patty of the of the 56th georgia. He wrote, honey, i wish i could tell you what a dream i had of you last night. I will tell you about it when i get to see you. Oh, that i could realize such facts as the dreams perpetrated. There is another guy, surgeon William Child of the fifth new hampshire. He wrote to his wife, he said, my dreams might cause you to laugh. Perhaps blush. I have concluded to tell you at another time, if i should ever see you. Now these guys were modest. Other soldiers, not so much. And they described explicit dreams that may have made their women blush and avert their eyes. Here we have a Union Soldier who wrote a very colorfully descriptive letter to his fiancee in 1864. I will read you a little excerpt. I have pinched your picture and it does not holler. I have met and it does not holler. I have kissed it and it does not return my kisses. I have hugged it and it does not return my hugs. So consider yourself pinched, bitten, hugged and kissed. I have been dreaming about you all last night. Had onlyk at home and 12 hours to stay. You and i snuck away and we went upstairs to that little front room in your house. And we had such a pleasant time. There is a great euphemism. [laughter] but alas, it was only a dream. For some soldiers, dreams of girls actually led to wet dreams. I apologize in advance for the terrible puns you are about to hear. Some are more obvious than others. I will see if you can figure them out. Fortunately, this was the best image i could find for this part of the talk. Harold said to charlotte, so will you be at the talk this afternoon . And she said, yes. And my wife said, no you are , not. Wet dreams were considered a disability during the civil war and grounds for a discharge. You all got the first one. [laughter] i should be on Comedy Central the way that this is going. A chaplain from the 145th pennsylvania took note of this happening in his regiment. He wrote that the men had been married for some years, a