Chauncey Hill: Part 6

By Craig Hilmer

Chauncey J. Hill, in 1864, was a 26-year-old farmer just married to 20-year-old Sarah Downing. Both had family who farmed in the Saratoga area and were themselves just setting up their own household and farm when Chauncey was called up to offer his services to the Minnesota 9th Regiment, Company K for battle in the Civil War.

He and Sarah corresponded during the war and those letters were maintained by family until they were donated to the Minnesota Historical Society in the 1960s.  The Press has run several weeks of these letters to date, with just two more weeks to go to the final set.

Private Hill, in our series, is sitting in Rolla Missouri with Company K, waiting orders to move South to engage the enemy. While the letters he sent Sarah over the month or so Company K was housed in Rolla are a great insight into the drudgery of camp life for the Civil War soldier, they don’t always make for scintillating reading. Therefore, we’ll excerpt some of the more interesting passages and today offer a poem that Chauncey wrote young Sarah Downing on May 24, 1863 when they were courting.

Gentle Words and Loving Smiles
The young rose in the summer time
is beautiful to me
And glorious the many stars
that glimmer on the sea
But gentle words and loving smiles
and hands to clasp my own
Are better than the brightest flower
or stars that ever shone. 

The sun that warms the grapes to life
the dew, the drooping flowers,
may brightly shine to hail the lights
of autumn’s opening hour!
But words that breathe of tenderness
and smiles that we know are true
Are warmer than the summer time
and brighter than the dew. 

It is not much the world can give
with all its subtle art
and gold and gems are not the things
to satisfy the heart.
But, oh! If those who cluster ‘round
the altar and the hearth
have gentle words and loving smiles
How beautiful is earth! 

To Miss Sarah Downing

Private Hill, nearly a year later sent Sarah, then his wife, verse from Rolla. What follows is a sort of homesick love poem, centered on the soldier life.

Thoughts in Camp
In our tented camp
where the village lamp
glimmers through the damp
of the evening sky 

Here I sit and gaze
thinking of the days
when my love was nigh 

Northland home afar
holds my polar star!
Plains and rivers bar
and keep us far apart. 

Still love’s magnet true
keeps her form in hew
another love yet new
in her warm young heart. 

Could she view with me
Heaven’s arching sea
dotted over free
with those silver isles
happy would I be. 

Feeling now that we are together
she giving loving smiles
how said the thought
that I can see her not 

Evening has not brought
us together bride.
Shall we shortly meet
and each other greet?
Will our eager feet
bring us side by side? 

Ah uncertain fate!
Hearts are desolate
while our Ship of State
on the traitor sea
struggles for her life 

And with ruin rife
bears a lot in strife
Motto: “We are free!”
Oh God in mercy shield
the brave man in the field
thy arm of justice wield 

Our Union yet restored
Oh heal Your sundered shores!
May freedom’s voice arise
to calm the captive’s cries
and give us peace once more. 

Rolla Missouri, 1864, Chauncey J. Hill

Back to the letters next week as we continue the Chauncey Hill saga.