In Rescued Letters, a Civil War Soldier from Brooklyn Faces Death

In the summer of 1864, a few days before The Battle of the Crater, Samuel Sims of Brooklyn wrote a letter to his mother. "The next 48 hours are likely to be of great moment," he confided. "Our corps will be active in the movement and, in all likelihood, there will be stirring times."

That's as poignant as an understatement gets. Sims was a Union officer and veteran of major battles such as Vicksurg and Antietam. He must have known that his orders to lead the attack on the defenses outside Petersburg, Virginia, would place him in extreme danger. So he used the letter to reassure his family that he was ready to do his duty and, just in case, to say goodbye.

"I wish to assure you all that I'm fully conscious of what might happen to me and believe that I can meet any event as you would have me," he wrote. Three days later, Sims would lie dead on the battlefield, sword in hand. 

How the Letters Were Saved

The letters are on display as part of an exhibit at the Brooklyn Historical Society marking the 150th anniversary of the end of the Civil War. But they came within moments of joining their author in extinction. Sims's grandson Kenneth, and his wife Dorothy, kept them in their Santa Barbara home until Dorothy's death in 1993. (The material had survived Kenneth's death in 1988.) But with no family members to come and collect them —the couple had no children — a cleaning crew tossed the letters into a trash can outside the house.

Then chance intervened.

A worker who'd come to turn off the gas noticed the pile of documents and, curious, grabbed them as a garbage truck was rumbling down the street. He shared the letters with a friend who is an amateur historian, and who eventually sent them on to the Historic Fund Collection at Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, where Samuel Sims is buried. The Cemetery is loaning the letters to the Brooklyn Historical Society for the exhibit, which will run until the Spring 2016.

Who Was Samuel Sims?

In 1861, he was a 30-year-old widower living at 256 Bergen Street in Park Slope. His wife Mary Ann had died of anemia the previous December, leaving him with three small children. In April, Sims decided to respond to President Lincoln's call for volunteers, quit his job as a glass stainer, and join the Union Army. His sister Lucretia cared for the kids as he captained a regiment from Brooklyn through major engagements across the South.

"I have been troubled with boils on my neck," Samuel wrote to Lucretia from Kentucky in April 1863. "They have got well and now I have another somewhere else which makes it troublesome to ride." Besides boils on his butt, Sims complains of bad food, mosquitoes, dust and fleas: the daily torments of a Civil War soldier. In one letter, he describes drinking boiled seawater and longing for his faucet back in Brooklyn.

Julie Golia of the Brooklyn Historical Society said Sims comes across as a man of military discipline who is still able to speak with tenderness to Lucretia. "I love the letter that he writes to his sister where he says, 'They want me to turn the light out but I just want to keep writing to you,'" Golia said. "You get that they were really close."

"Kiss my little darlings for me," Samuel writes about his children in another letter. "I hope they will appreciate your kind care of them. I do."

"Your Affectionate Son"

Sims was one of more than 30,000 Brooklynites who served in the Civil War. Golia read dozens of letters written by those soldiers while preparing the Historical Society's exhibit. She said Sims stood out for his resilience. "A lot of soldiers described the everyday carnage: their friends' faces being blown off, seeing people being buried with their feet sticking out, describing somebody getting amputated and then dying quickly after," Golia said. "It can mess with your head — but it didn't seem to mess with Samuel's head."

The Union plan for what became known as the Battle of the Crater was to use four tons of blasting powder to create the largest man-made explosion in history and blow a hole in the enemy's line. (Pennsylvania engineers had dug beneath the Confederate Army and packed the tunnel with explosives.) Then Sims and his men were to rush in and capture the Petersburg defenses.

In his final letter to his mother, Sims signs off, "Having faith in God, who doeth all things well, I remain your affectionate son, Samuel." After a Confederate sergeant killed him, Sims's body lay on the battlefield for three days before it was buried in Virginia. It was disinterred years later and taken to Green-Wood Cemetery, where he now rests beneath a granite monument paid for by his men. The epitaph reads, "To the gallant Sims, who died for America."

Original music contributed by Steve Mayone.