OXFORD, Miss. – More than 300 letters written by a
University of Mississippi student who left the
campus in 1861 to help the Confederate forces fight
the Civil War are the basis of a recent book.
Jennifer Ford, associate professor and director of
archives and special collection in UM’s J.D.
Williams Library, was inspired to write “The Hour
of Our Nation’s Agony” (University of Tennessee
Press, 2007) as she processed the letters, which
were donated to the library in 2002.
The book follows a young Lt. William Cowper Nelson,
native of Holly Springs, as he is transformed from
an idealistic young soldier to a battle-hardened
veteran.
The letters were donated to the library by Nelson’s
descendant Susan “Sudy” Seals of Murfreesboro,
Tenn. Seals discovered them when clearing out a
family home and turned them over to her son-in-law
Matthew Sisson, a captain in the Coast Guard.
“He loved them,” Ford said. “They got the family
together and they decided to call us and donate
them. That’s when I first started working on the
letters.”
It took Ford a year to edit the letters. In order
to better understand people and places for the
book’s appendices, she traveled to Jackson many
Saturday mornings to do research at the Mississippi
Department of Archives and History, which has a
complete set of soldiers’ military records.
“I would leave every Saturday morning at 5 to be
there when they opened,” she said. “They closed
mid-day, so I would have to leave and come back the
next Saturday.”
Her research produced the book’s more than 1,000
footnotes, which she said some may consider too
many, but Ford disagrees.
“I find that sometimes notes help people understand
more about the life of the person they are reading
about,” she said.
Ford said the University of Tennessee Press was
“incredibly receptive” to the possibility of
publishing the book.
“I continued to work on it for over a year revising
and then they accepted it.”
Special recognition for the book soon followed. The
title is included in the Voices of the Civil War
Series, edited by Peter Carmichael, a professor of
Civil War studies at West Virginia University.
“Of the 35 titles that have been published in (the
series), Jennifer Ford’s ‘The Hour of Our Nation’s
Agony’ is one of the most important volumes
published to date,” Carmichael said. “William
Cowper Nelson, unlike so many of his peers, did not
restage the war as a heroic event. He was very
aware and very open as to how the horrors of army
life tore away at his humanity, but such
reflections did not undermine his commitment to the
Confederate cause.”
Following the book’s release in September, Ford was
an invited presenter at the Southern Festival of
Books in Nashville. Held annually in October, the
event is a three-day literary festival attended by
more than 200 authors.
“I got a great response from the crowd (at the
festival),” Ford said. “Plus, I also got to see
Will Nelson’s family again, which was very nice.”
Ford said she hopes those who read the book will
better appreciate what it was like for a young man
to leave everything and everyone behind in order to
fight for a cause during a bloody time in America’s
past.
“I hope that they will get an understanding that
this is one person stuck in a very confusing and
difficult time in our nation’s history,” she said.
“It gives the perspective of a young man who was 19
when he enlisted and had never been outside his
home finding himself in the most incongruous
places.”
For Ford, researching the life of Will Nelson was a
diversion from her specialty of women’s history.
“His humanity is what interested me,” she said.
“He had great flashes of humanity toward the
enemy. (For example), he talks in some letters
about going to fetch buckets of water after the
Battle of Sharpsburg for enemies captured during
the conflict.”
After graduating from Millsaps College with a
degree in English, Ford completed her master’s
degree in history and Master’s of Library Science
at the University of Southern Mississippi in 1997.
She is enrolled in UM’s doctoral program in
history.
A Jackson native, Ford began her work at the UM
library in 1998 and was promoted to department head
in 2005.
The actual letters of William Cowper Nelson are
available for viewing in the J.D. Williams
Library.
For more information, contact Ford at jwford@olemiss.edu or
call 662-915-7639. To learn more about the J.D. Williams
Library, go to