An acquaintance of mine asked me if I had seen any published civil war era letters from either soldiers or family, that might shed some light on why a confederate soldier might desert his unit and join the union army. It seems he has an ancestor who was a member of a Coffee County, Alabama confederate unit, who deserted, and joined the 1st Florida Cavalry, which he stated was a union unit. He wanted to understand what rationale might have induced a confederate to desert his southern heritage, and join the union. I told him I had never seen a civil war era letter mentioning that subject, and doubted that the number of such incidences were significant. So, I told him I'd ask you folks if you knew of any letters you may have seen, and if you could come up with any reasons that a confederate might desert and join the union. I know that there were incidents where captured confederate soldiers joined the union to preclude confinement in a prisoner of war camp, and of course there were significant numbers of confederate prisoners who became galvanized yankees"; but that's a whole special situation. Jim Gilmer

Hi Jim, Haven't seen letters, but every now and then a story appears of a switch hitter at his court-martial. Some time back, I think it was Civil War Times that had the tale of a guy who made a career out of fence jumping, changing sides more times than Mary Tyler Moore changed clothes. (He finally ended up as the guest of honor at a neck tie party thrown by the CSA.) I wouldn't spend a lot of time on this, because what motivates A to do X has zip to do with why B does it. Dr. Douglas Freeman once said something along the lines of that while he could account for every minute of Lee's life, he never pretended to know what Lee was thinking. Sometimes the right answer is, "I don't know." Dennis