While My Country is in Danger: The Life & Letters of Lt. Col. Richard S. Thompson, 12th New Jersey Volunteers edited by Gerry Harder Poriss & Ralph G. Poriss. Foreword by Chris Calkins. 256 pp., hc, dj, maps, notes, index.

While My Country is in Danger: The Life and Letters of Lt. Col. Richard S. Thompson

by Gerry Harder Poriss and Ralph G. Poriss

Born in Cape May Court House, NJ, Richard Swain Thompson was just 23 years old when President Lincoln issued his first call for troops. Stirred by devotion to the Union, Thompson promptly joined a Home Guard unit in Philadelphia where he had begun his law career. But by August of 1862, he had returned to New Jersey to enlist as Captain of Company K, 12th New Jersey Volunteers and to participate in its recruitment. He later rose to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. Contemporary diary entries and letters to family and friends (as well as notes written in later notes written in later years) provide a picture of the experiences of a mid-level officer at Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, Bristoe Station, in the Petersburg Campaign, and Reams' Station, where he was seriously wounded. Letters to him from family and friends show the attitudes and emotions of the civilians at home.

Richard Thompson's Civil War experiences are placed in the context of his entire life, including his prominent family, his education at Harvard Law School, and his highly successful post-war law practice in Chicago. Pre- and post-war letters and speeches illustrate the fears and fervor of the pre-war years and the pride and sense of history felt in the years after the war by those who had served the Union. Detailed information on the Thompson family, related families (e.g., Learning, Scovels), and his comrades-in-arms is also provided.