Jerome: To My Beloved Absent Companion

Jerome: To My Beloved Absent Companion. Edited by Sylvia Burbank Morris. Cullman, Ala.: Sylvia Morris, 1996. 250 pp. $42.50. Available from Sylvia Burbank Morris, P. O. Box 305, Cullman, AL 35056-0305. This collection of Civil War letters by the editor's great-grandfather provides a revealing look at the difficulties of war, both on campaign and on the homefront. Dr. Jerome Burbank, an 1851 graduate of the University of Iowa Medical Department, practiced medicine in Avon, Wisconsin, before serving as assistant surgeon in the 22nd Regiment of Wisconsin Volunteers (1862-63) and as surgeon in the 33rd Regiment of Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry (1864-65).

Jerome wrote lengthy letters to his wife, Jerusha, and their four children, detailing daily life in the regiment and answering Jerusha's questions regarding the household she was forced to manage alone. Jerome's correspondence revealed both his affection for his family and his frustration at not being home to deal with delinquent tenants and sick children himself.

Readers of the Alabama Review will be particularly interested in Jerome's account of the occupation of Spanish Fort, Montgomery, and Tuskegee at the close of the war. The surgeon spent almost three months in Tuskegee in the summer of 1865, becoming acquainted with local residents who had "some of the most beautiful yards here that I ever saw" (p. 231). He regularly attended the Baptist church but felt uncomfortable in the cultural setting, "not yet capable of reconciling the idea of slavery and religion together, or to associate the idea of treason and religion together" (p. 232). Although he was a complimentary visitor, Jerome never fully understood the people of what seemed to him a foreign land.

This volume is most valuable in its demonstration of the daily hardships of the Civil War, the tensions placed on families separated by great distance, and the contrasting ideologies that divided two sets of Americans. A fine editing job makes Jerome's account of the world around him a pleasure to read. - STEVE MURRAY, Auburn University

Copyright University of Alabama Press Apr 1998
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