Posted Feb. 16, 2022
If you do not know any other course ”
T heprocess by which Confederate prisoners at Gettysburg could correspond with loved ones at home was a convoluted one. It involved stamps of both postal systems, a "flag of truce" that allowed mail to pass through the lines, and no expectation of privacy, as Benjamin Franklin Little of North Carolina explained to his wife in a letter written August 17, 1863.
"If you do not know any other course (better inquire) write one page, place it in an envelope (left open) with confederate stamp on one corner, & Federal stamp, (which I enclose) on the other, directed to “Capt. B.F. Little, Care of Dr. L.W. Oakley, Surgeon at General Hospital, Gettysburg, Penn. Enclose this unsealed letter in a sealed one (with our stamp) to Commissioner Robert Ould, Richmond, Va. with a note requesting him to forward by "flag of truce", Please enclose me 10 confederate stamps."
References
- Benjamin Franklin Little, letter to wife, August 17, 1863, in the Benjamin Franklin Little Papers, Southern Historical Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill