Amid the grim reality of civil strife, soldiers’ thoughts still turned to romance on Valentine’s Day.
For the enamored Confederate soldier who anonymously dispatched an ardent message from “Gen. Cupid’s Hd. Qrs.” to Mollie Woodson of Appomattox Court House, Virginia, three years into the war, the horrors of combat had clearly failed to weaken his romantic ardor on February 14.
That love-smitten warrior was celebrating a holiday, St. Valentine’s Day, that had become widely observed early in the 19th century. By 1828, when Sir Walter Scott wrote his novel The Fair Maid of Perth; or, St. Valentine’s Day, February 14 was devoted to romance. British merchants were the first to market valentines in the 1830s, but their American counterparts weren’t far behind. Esther Rowland, whose stationer father had previously imported valentines to Massachusetts, began selling her own versions in the 1840s.
In the prewar years, Americans became accustomed to sending commercially produced greetings. Popular choices included fancy cutwork cards, lacy stationery and real lace embellished with hand-painted birds and flowers, or pasted-on colored decals of cupids and hearts. Some were so elaborate they had to be mailed in boxes. There were also rebus valentines, riddles that omitted words and replaced them with symbols.
Even in a nation divided, commerce thrived—and so did enthusiasm for St. Valentine. Early on, the press tended to describe Valentine’s Day in martial terms. The February 9, 1861, issue of the Leavenworth, Kan., Daily Times noted: “Most…readers are probably aware that St. Valentine’s Day occurs on the 14th of the present month. The artful archer, Cupid, will be in his glory on that occasion, and is already at work filling his quiver with the missiles of lovely warfare.”
As the war ground on, newspapers still reminded readers of the holiday. An ad in Chicago’s Daily Tribune of January 22, 1862, proclaimed: “Valentines for 1862 My stock for the approaching season will be entirely new, and will far surpass that of former years. Valentines, Single, from 1 cent to Twenty Dollar….Comic and Sentimental Valentines Assorted Patriotic comic Valentines, Envelopes, Cards, Writers, &c.”
Men in the field generally had to fall back on their own talents. Virginian Mollie Lyne received these lines of verse from a soldier on Valentine’s Day 1863:
Mid all the trials and toils of war,
The clash of arms, the cannon’s roar,
The many scenes of desolation and strife,
And varying fortunes which surround this life.
Naught else disturbs me, half so much,
As the nightly visions which haunt my couch.
But why should I not be happy?
Ah! Methinks that thou canst tell,
Thou hast me bound, as if by spell,
I love thee Mollie, with all my heart.
Other swains stuck to traditional love letters. Private Joseph C. Morris of the Phillips Legion [Georgia] Cavalry poured out his heart to Sylvanie Bremond of Stanardsville, Va., on February 14, 1865:
Moments appear days to me, and day an age—an age of misery and woe—when I cannot behold your beloved face….Why have we passion? If upon the first development of their genuine tenderness they must be curbed and checked, by the arbitrary rules of war.
Especially in the Confederate States of America, war’s deprivations made it increasingly difficult to celebrate Cupid’s special day. The Daily Chronicle & Sentinel of Augusta, Ga., postulated on February 6, 1862: “When our Southern land shall again bask in the broad sunshine of peace and prosperity, mayhap the observance of Valentine’s Day…will be general among us.” Richmond’s Whig of February 9, 1864, noted soberly, “Although public attention should be diverted from levity whilst the alarms of war are heard at our very doors, we believe that on the 14th February, a large number of ‘Valentines’ will pass through the post office.”
Despite the conflict’s tragic losses, the uninterrupted observance of Valentine’s Day throughout the war years proves yet again that love endures—along with the power of marketing.
Originally published in the February 2008 issue of Civil War Times. To subscribe, click here.
