Censorship on letters home

[hardeeflag]

I have a question on some letters I have read. One were letters written by a soldier who fought at Bayou Bourbeaux, LA. The letter contents directly correspond to the post battle but the dates at the head of the letter are completely wrong. I also ran across this anomaly when reading letters of my Grandfather at Guadalcanal. Again the dates on the letter are totally off but the content directly relates to the engagement in the Pacific (I know this example does not have to do with the wbts but it is again an example.)

Was it common for letters to be examined and contents and dates changed on soldier's letters in case they were captured by the enemy? What does a historian do when including a letter in a reference but the dates seems off? I'd be curious if anyone has come across this?

[Jayhawker Jake]

Re: Censorship on letters home

I've never heard of censorship being practiced during the Civil War, and numerous sources have mentioned that letters weren't censored, and thus can contain a wealth of information about a soldier's view of the battle. Without knowing exactly how far off the dates in question are, I'd hazard a guess that the author was simply mistaken on the dates, as I've seen that before. I recently worked with an autobiography chapter that dealt with the CW in Missouri, and the author recalled (many years later, granted), that Price's Raid took place in the summer of '63.


You obedient Servant,
Jacob Allen

[Michael Comer]

Re: Censorship on letters home

I've never heard of it either nor have I ever come across any mention of any government office that would have done such work.

[Don Dixon]

Re: Censorship on letters home

There is military operational and order of battle information in many of the Civil War soldiers' letters that I have read that would have been very useful to a military intelligence analytical organization, had either side in the Civil War had such an organization. I acknowledge that the Army of the Potomac's Bureau of Military Information was a prototype military intelligence collection and analysis unit; but that it was vey unsophsiticated by modern standards. I've seen no indications that the letters were opened enroute and resealed, nor have I seen examples of the censor's stamps that one sees on letters from subsequent wars. That leads me to believe that there was no organized or significant censorship of soldiers' letters.

Regards,
Don Dixon

[4vaadjutant]

Re: Censorship on letters home

Over the years I have examined wartime correspondence of Indiana soldiers on file at the Indiana Historical Society and do not recall seeing any evidence of any letters or their covers (envelopes) having been tampered in a way that would indicate being subjected to possible censorship. Members of the 4th Virginia Infantry of Indianapolis have reviewed correspondence of the Liberty Hall Volunteers (4th Virginia Infantry) over the years and not only have those letters not given any evidence to support review or examination by military or government censors, many of them were not sent through the services of the Post Office Department. A number of those letters contain references to the fact someone from home (Lexington, Virginia) was in camp and the writer wanted to quickly finish his letter home before the hometown neighbor left camp to return to Lexington. Those letters were obviously spared the expense of postage since they were delivered privately. If censorship was practiced it would have been likely that orders were issued to require all letters to be processed through the authorities. In my studies of military and government operations I have not found any evidence of censorship bureaus or departments having been created. An argument could be made that it would be a waste of time to do so since information about enemy forces nearby was often readily available from new prisoners, deserters, spies, patriotic citizens and newspapers. While the information was often inaccurate, who’s to say that information in a letter by a soldier in camp would be any more reliable? It should be noted for this topic that there is ample evidence of mail from POWs being examined and inspector’s stamps being applied to their covers.

Your ob’t servant,
Tom Williams
4th Virginia Infantry
Indianapolis

[hardeeflag]

Re: Censorship on letters home

Thanks for the information. Interesting as the month of correspondence, if memory serves me was months off. Same with the letters from my ancestor at Guadalcanal in the Navy.