D. W. Whittle

A Register of His Papers in the Library of Congress

Prepared by Harry G. Heiss

Manuscript Division, Library of Congress

Washington, D.C.

2008

Contact information: http://lcweb.loc.gov/rr/mss/address.html

Finding aid encoded by Library of Congress Manuscript Division, 2008

Finding aid URL: http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.mss/eadmss.ms008124

Table of Contents

Collection Summary

Selected Search Terms

Personal Names

Organizations

Subjects

Locations

Occupations

Administrative Information

Provenance:

Processing History:

Copyright Status:

Preferred Citation:

Scope and Content Note

Arrangement of the Papers

Container List

Collection Summary

Selected Search Terms

The following terms have been used to index the description of this collection in the Library's online catalog. They are grouped by name of person or organization, by subject or location, and by occupation and listed alphabetically therein.

Administrative Information

The papers of D. W. Whittle, Union army officer, business manager, songwriter, and evangelist, were given to the Library of Congress by Emma Moody Smith in 1989.

The papers of D. W. Whittle were arranged and described in 1997. The finding aid was revised in 2008.

The status of copyright in the unpublished writings of D. W. Whittle is governed by the Copyright Law of the United States (Title 17, U.S.C.).

Researchers wishing to cite this collection should include the following information: Container number, D. W. Whittle Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

Scope and Content Note

The papers of Daniel Webster Whittle (1840-1901) span the years 1861-1974, with the bulk of the material produced during the period 1861-1865. They consist of biographical sketches, correspondence, court records, maps, military orders, a diary, dinner menu, photograph, poem, and tax list.

Whittle was born in Chicopee Falls, Massachusetts, and moved to Chicago shortly before the outbreak of the Civil War. Raising a company of volunteers at the Chicago Board of Trade, he served as a Union officer in the Seventy-second Illinois Volunteer Regiment, eventually attaining the rank of major. He served with General O. O. Howard and was with William T. Sherman on his March to the Sea. Whittle was wounded at Vicksburg, Mississippi, and was discharged when the war ended before he had fully recovered. After the war he was a business manager for the Elgin Watch Company and in 1874, at the invitation of Dwight Lyman Moody, became a traveling evangelist. Writing under the pseudonym El Nathan, he was also a prolific writer of gospel songs, the best known being Moment by Moment, written in 1893 with his daughter, Mary Whittle Moody.

The Whittle Papers deal almost exclusively with Whittle's Civil War military service as an officer assigned to the Headquarters Department of the Army of the Tennessee. They contain official correspondence, field orders, and general orders concerning troop movements, complaints from local citizens about looting by Union soldiers, prisoner exchanges, and routine military matters. Included in some letters are marginalia by William T. Sherman and Ulysses S. Grant. The papers also contain material pertaining to cases heard by Whittle as a military judge advocate and a diary that he kept during the latter months of the war detailing local conditions in western Georgia and eastern Alabama and the transition from military to civilian law.

Arrangement of the Papers

This collection is arranged alphabetically by type of material.

Container List