In the days after the 8th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry assembled at Camp Curtin in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, the unit, made up mostly of volunteers from Pennsylvania’s anthracite coal fields, moved toward the Keystone State’s southern border and a region that would be hotly contested later in the Civil War.

In Sergeant Charles Cyphers second war-time letter to his former employers at the Pittston Gazette, he wrote from the Cumberland Valley community of Chambersburg. This town, the seat of Franklin County, sits just 13 miles north of the Mason-Dixon line and the dividing line between slavery and freedom. In the Civil War’s first months, it remained unclear whether Maryland would remain in the Union or choose to secede and make the Mason-Dixon line a de facto border with a hostile state.

In response to the possible threat on Pennsylvania’s southern border, the Department of Pennsylvania was created in the days after Fort Sumter, with General Robert Patterson commanding 26 regiments scattered across the Keystone State at strategic locations, including the 8th Pennsylvania and another regiment at Chambersburg.

In Cyphers letter, he details the situation at Chambersburg, talks about their new encampment called “Camp Slifer” after Pennsylvania’s Secretary of the Commonwealth Eli Slifer, and describes the living conditions and his early feelings about military life.

From the Pittston Gazette, May 9, 1861:

---

Another Letter from Mr. Cyphers.

Camp Slifer, Chambersburg, Pa. April 29th, 1861.

Mr. Thompson — Dear Sir: 

We are now at the above place, sixteen miles from the Maryland line. About three thousand troops are stationed at “Camp Slifer,” and the same number at “Camp Irvin,” some miles distant. Chambersburg is three quarters of a mile from this camp. 

The people are all for the Union — every man, woman and child of them. The ladies contribute much to the comfort of the soldiers in camp, and send us many little delicacies that we would not and could not get were it not for them. 

At Harrisburg, we were quartered in common tents. We have board shanties now. We expect to remain at this camp several weeks. If you could but see our outfit, methinks that you would not want to be a soldier. I would describe it but cannot. Its description must be left to an abler pen than mine. 

However, we have enough to eat and drink. I am well and get along better than I expected, with the usages a soldier receives at a place like this. I have just come from the outskirts of a wood, where I was stationed as a guard or sentinel, for 12 hours, from yesterday evening till five this morning, and feel just as though I would like to sleep awhile to-day, but before doing so have scribbled the above. 

I will not get another chance to write for some weeks, perhaps, as we are obliged to drill all the time, Sundays not excepted, with short intermission to eat our meals.

I send my best wishes and kind regards to yourself and family, and to all who may inquire concerning me.

From your humble servant, 

Chas. M. Cyphers.

---

Read the previous letter from the Letters from War: 1861 series.

---

This is part of an ongoing series called “Letters from War: 1861” that will share correspondence written on the front lines during the turbulent first year of the Civil War.

---

---