Type: Exhibition caption

Detail: For the ordinary soldier, army life entailed much tedium and discomfort interspersed with moments of sheer terror. In this January 1862 letter, Aaron Van Fleet of Clover Hill, New Jersey, a private in the Twenty-third Pennsylvania Volunteers, complains to his brother of cold, irregularity of pay, and illness in the camp. In spite of limited educational opportunities, most New Jersey soldiers were literate. Van Fleet perished at Spotsylvania in 1864.We got paid today so I will send yo this money….We did not get paid all…Snow here now and quite cold…There is a good many living here now with the fiever 5 died in one week from our Camp I would like to be home Now for a while….I hope I will be home next winter….

Type: Exhibition case

Name: The Early Years

Detail: None of the New Jersey units saw much action in the first year of the war. In August, 1861, they became part of the Army of the Potomac, the new designation for units stationed around Washington under the command of General George B. McClellan. The New Jersey troops began fighting in earnest in the winter and spring of 1862, when McClellan pursued the strategy of trying to capture Richmond by an invasion of the Peninsula of Virginia. By early summer, it became clear that the plan was not a success. Robert E. Lee’s Confederates pushed McClellan’s forces back with heavy casualties, including the loss of New Jersey’s most renowned war hero, Major General Philip Kearny. The campaign ended with the Union’s near rout at the Second Battle of Bull Run in August 1862.