The Unknown Friends: A True Civil War Love Story (Expanded, Annotated)

By Charlotte B. Rinewalt Ingersoll

In one of the most delightful, passionate, eloquent, and humorous TRUE stories of the American Civil War, two strangers meet by accident through the U.S. mails. One is a soldier and the other is a young woman in New York."I have no excuse to offer in writing to you, except this: To while away an evening, and to ward off an attack of ennui, I have ventured to address a letter to my friend's friend."So began the correspondence of two strangers, the "unknown friends," of the title. That the first letter was answered by someone other than the "Sarah" that Chalmers Ingersoll wrote to was pure chance. But that chance turned into a remarkable passion acted out in beautiful letters to one another during the sorrow and bloodshed of the Civil War.At Beverly, Aldie, Upperville, Gettysburg, Williamsport, Boonsboro, Falling Waters, Chester Gap, and Culpepper, Sargeant Ingersoll fought with the Illinois Cavalry. When he could, he wrote to his unknown friend. The tenderness, humor, and eventual passion in these letters is all the more marvelous considering the couple would not meet until the end of Ingersoll's service in 1864."Sometimes I think, dear one, that if I could have you near me, -- very near me, -- that even a whisper would not pass unheard nor the slightest breath go unfelt, -- if this could be so I should be perfectly happy."Upon receiving his lover's picture, he assures her that her fears of his disappointment are for naught:"I recognize in your features what so charmed me in your letters, the beauty and graces of an intellectual and lovely mind."

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1519045328
• ISBN13: 9781519045324
• Release Date: November 2016
• Publisher: Independently published
• Length: 84 Pages
• Weight: 0.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 0.2" x 6.0"