To whomever is reading this,
It is plausible to assume I am no longer of this world. As I am writing this, the date is the 12th of December 1874. My name is Abraham Irwin. I am an American man born January 29th, 1795 and I am 79 years old. This will be a recount of all my experiences before I soon die in order to leave my mark on this world, no matter how small. I pray that the future generations that may stumble upon this account may take heed to both my mistakes and triumphs to further aid themselves in the struggle that is life.
My early life was not necessarily anything special. My father was a survivor of the revolutionary war that forever changed the world. He settled down with my mother to later begin a family. There were seven of us. I was the third born but their first son. My father especially coddled me. When my two older sisters were hard at work on the farms and my four little brothers and sisters were wreaking havoc on my poor mother, my father would take me out to the woods to teach me how to hunt. I dreaded having to haul our equipment for that many miles, but when we would get there, it was very enjoyable to spend that time with my father, even if he was stern at times. When I was 12, we took our same trip out to the woods until my father stopped dead in his tracks.
“Abe, I have a question to ask,” my father said sternly.
“What is it Papa?” I stood there shaking. My father often was serious, but never like this.
“Are you going to enlist in the army?” He looked at me with the most rigid look he had ever had on his face.
“Yes, Papa, j-just like you,” I said with uncertainty.
“Don’t.”
I could not respond. I stood there frozen, looking him in the eye as he towered over me menacingly.
“Why not Papa?” I squeezed out the words from my dry throat.
“It’s not worth it.” He looked like he was hiding something.
“Is it bad to fight for our country? I thought it was good,” I said with confusion.
“Don’t ever speak about the army around me or in my household. Ever.” We were silent all the way back to the house.
Six years would pass until that memory would resurface. I ran to the butcher to get a leg of beef for dinner. As soon as I ran off back to the house, I saw the soldiers march through the city. They looked tough, like they were really fighting for us. I returned home and told my parents.
“I saw the soldiers march in the center of town. Do you think I could be like them?” I asked joyously.
My father looked at me with shock and horror, my mother the same. He took me by the arm as my mother sobbed. As he led me out to the forest, I kept asking where we were going, but he wouldn’t answer. He took us to our hunting spot and stopped.
“Do you remember what I told you here?” he asked, his voice tinged with anger.
“No, I don’t, Papa,” I replied sarcastically like the haughty teenager I was.
“I told you here six years ago to never join the army,” he said. I could already tell he was fuming.
“Why not, Papa? I don’t remember you answering that question,” I said with a feeling of superiority.
“Because it’s not worth it, dammit! When will you understand that!” He hadn’t ever raised his voice before.
“Is it a bad thing to fight for my country?” I yelled back.
“You can help the country in other ways that don’t require you to throw your life away!”
“I can fight. Maybe you just left the army because you weren’t strong enough to handle it!” He remained silent for a while.
“If you think you’re strong enough to handle the army, get out of my face and never come back.”
Those were the final words that I would ever hear from him.
He had sounded like he was almost crying, but I didn’t care. I turned my back on him. He couldn’t understand my reasons why I could fight. He thought that I was too weak, but I would prove him wrong.
I remember vividly. The date was August 2nd, 1812, and soldiers were in the capital trying to recruit members for the war against Britain. It was what I’d been looking for. I walked up to the soldiers and said that I would like to join the cause. They transported us into a wagon. There were two other kids around my age. The first one looked a bit too young to be enlisted. He had red hair and freckles all over his face. His name was Samuel. The second one looked stronger than the horse that pulled the cart, yet his face looked so young. His name was Jack. Samuel enlisted so that he didn’t have to carry on his family’s cycle of poverty, and Jack enlisted to help fight for his country and prove himself, like me.
We all arrived at the training camp, and to my surprise, all of the recruits looked about the same age as me, if not younger. We all stood shoulder to shoulder as the drill sergeant walked up in front of all of us.
“Heads up!” he yelled, grabbing our attention. He was quite loud. “I respect that all of you have come here today to help fight for the glory of our country! Now the hard truth here is most of you will not come back alive. If you are not prepared to sacrifice your lives, turn back now!”
Many of the recruits turned around one after another. Jack and Samuel were still beside me. It was nice to know the three of us would possibly get through this hell together.
“Now that the no-good scamps are gone, let us get started, shall we?” The sergeant had a certain charisma. Although he was tough, we never hated him.
I was right about one thing, the training camp was hell, both physically and mentally. The same repetitive drills with the sergeant hollering at us at the same time became our normal. My entire body felt like it was going to drop dead at any moment. The only thing that kept my spirits in check was my determination to make it to the war to fight for my country alongside Jack and Samuel.
“Hey, Abraham,” Jack yelled with Samuel next to him. “How ya been holdin’ up?” He playfully hit me on the arm. Samuel started to laugh.
“Well, I’m alive right now, so it ain’t that bad.” I rubbed my arm surprised at how hard he hit me.
“If yer worried about stayin’ alive now, just wait till we get to the battlefield!” He said with a lively look on his face.
“Is somethin’ bothering ya?” Samuel asked. He didn’t talk often, so I was surprised.
“No, I’m fine. It’s just sometimes I think about my family.”
“Well, we all do. You’re not alone, Abraham,” Jack said with a serious look on his face.
I realized he was right. Everyone there was fighting for different reasons. Jack and I were fighting for ourselves, more or less, while people like Samuel were fighting for their families.
“Thank you for your words. May God bless us,” I said. They looked confused.
“Well, we’ll see ya around,” Jack said as they walked away.
Hell continued for about two months before I was notified that I would be sent to the front lines up north. After all of my hard work and suffering, we would finally get to fight for our country.
“Where’d ya get positioned?” Jack asked with Samuel next to him.
“Up in Fort Erie. Front lines.”
“That’s where we also got stationed!” Jack said as Samuel nodded.
“That’s good. Make sure you guys don’t die on me.”
“We should be more worried about you!” Jack joked. “The wagon’s here. We should get going.”
We departed on October 25th. Fort Erie was about a month from where we were, but after three weeks, Samuel started showing signs of illness. He got paler and paler by the day. He started to look like a ghost. Something was not right.
Eventually, he lost all of his strength. He couldn’t even move. He had terrible diarrhea. It looked like he was going to die.
The call was made to leave him behind to die. Jack and I protested, but the decision was beyond us. They left him at our last camp to suffer. I tried to hold back tears, but it was too much. The three of us always got together during training camp. Jack tried to help comfort me, but it looked like he was broken too.
Two more weeks passed, and we finally made it to the fort. We were stationed a couple miles outside of it since there was a plan to hold down the location until we had to fight British forces. This fight was not planned, so Jack and I along with the rest of the forces went to battle. We don’t know who fired first. We charged and fought our best against the British. Dead bodies lie to the left and right of me. I tried my best to not let it get to my head until I saw Jack collapse with a gunshot wound in his chest. I ran over to him, picked him up over my shoulder, and carried him back to our camp.
The medic took a single look at him, and said, “He’s dead.”
“There’s no way! Check him again!” I pleaded.
“His heart is not beating. He died instantly when he was shot,” the medic told me.
I got calls from the other soldiers to go back into battle. I was still in shock as they tried to call out to me. Instead, I ran into the woods.
I couldn’t believe what I was doing. I knew if they caught me deserting the army, they’d execute me! But I could not stomach the war anymore. Everyone I got to know, everyone I held dear, just died in front of me. It wasn’t right.
Then I remembered what my father had said, how he had warned me. He had known this would happen, and he’d tried to protect me from what he’d experienced firsthand. I ran for what must have been miles through the woods with no sense of direction and nowhere to go.
I walked for days surviving off the rain until I saw a cabin. I ran full speed up to the porch.
An elderly lady opened the door and looked at my ragged self.
“My dear, what happened?”
“Please, I need food and water,” I stumbled as I uttered those words.
She rushed inside and signaled to me to come in. She offered me some leftover cold broth and bread as well as water.
I explained my situation and told her I needed to return to my home in Massachusetts. She said it was about a month’s journey on horse. I explained that I didn’t have a horse or any way to sustain myself until I got there. She suggested I stay there for the night while she made preparations for my departure.
In the morning, I headed outside to see her waiting for me with a horse and a sizeable sack of food and water.
“Everything is ready. You can keep the horse. It used to be my husband’s until he fell ill and died a year ago.” While I stare in surprise and gratitude, she explained, “You need it more than I do.”
I thanked her for everything and headed on my journey back home. It was a long month. There was just enough food for the journey. Many times, I thought I wouldn’t make it. However, when I saw the old town I was born and raised in, I realized I had finally made it.
I was prepared to apologize for everything I ever said and did to my parents and my brothers and sisters I’d left behind. I knocked on the door, but nobody answered. A woman approached me.
“Are you here for Mr. and Mrs. Irwin?” she asked.
“Yes, they’re my parents. I need to talk to them.”
“Oh, I am so sorry. They, um, they…” she trailed off.
“They what?”
“They died two months ago.”
“What do you mean?” I shouted.
“It was a tragedy. The entire family fell ill. None of them survived. I am so sorry to be the bearer of this news.”
I stared at her in shock and fell to my knees. I could not believe that I had foolishly left them for my own selfish reasons. Now, I would never talk to them or any of my family again.
To the future generations that have reached the end of my recount, please do not fall into the same pit of idealism and foolishness that I did. My foolish decisions cost me my family, my friends, and my comfort. In 1827, I was able to settle with my beautiful wife and two children. However, not a day went by that I did not live in fear of getting caught for desertion of the army all those years ago. Now on my deathbed, I plead to anybody who reads this letter to not do what I did all those years ago. Cherish your family and friends while you can because they could leave you in the flash of a muzzle.
Abraham Irwin
December 12th, 1874
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