The Portland Daily Press of December 3, 1863, features a remarkable letter from James O. Woodman, a prominent Portland citizen, addressed to the agents of the Sanitary Commission—the Civil War era's equivalent of the Red Cross. Woodman's lengthy missive is a passionate defense of the Union cause and an explanation of his $300 contribution to aid soldiers. Writing on Thanksgiving Day 1863, he traces the roots of the rebellion back thirty years to slaveholders' threats of disunion, arguing that slavery itself—with its denial of marriage, education, conscience, and basic humanity—forced America toward civil war. Woodman names names: Presidents Tyler, Polk, Fillmore, Pierce, and Buchanan, along with the Supreme Court justices behind the Dred Scott decision, as architects of the conflict. He also praises abolitionists like Charles Sumner, Salmon Chase, and John Hale as prophets who warned of what was coming. Most striking is his radical claim that Union victory would be worth even the total annihilation of the rebellious states—a stark measure of how total this war had become by late 1863.

By December 1863, the Civil War had reached a turning point. Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation had taken effect nearly a year earlier, and the Union Army was beginning to gain strategic momentum. Woodman's letter captures how Northern citizens were grappling with the war's true meaning: was it merely about preserving the Union, or was it fundamentally about destroying slavery itself? The Sanitary Commission, which he's supporting, represented the era's most organized civilian effort to care for soldiers—a precursor to modern disaster relief and veterans' services. His willingness to pay the $300 draft exemption fee (about $6,000 in today's money) while also donating to the Sanitary Commission shows how Northern civilians were mobilizing resources. This letter is essentially a sermon on why the terrible bloodshed was worth enduring.

• Woodman claims slaveholders represented only '1/100th of the free population'—a specific statistical argument he uses to show how a tiny minority had held disproportionate power and how their overthrow was inevitable.
• He references a prediction he made and 'caused it to be printed in the Portland Inquirer of the 8th of January, 1854'—showing how nineteenth-century citizens used local newspapers to create a paper trail of their political positions, almost like early op-eds.
• The Navy recruitment ad at the bottom offers 'two months advance' pay and 'prize money' to seamen enlisting at the Naval Rendezvous—revealing that prize money from captured Confederate ships was a real recruitment incentive.
• Woodman mentions he lost 'the use of four joints on my right hand' and was 'extremely near-sighted'—disabilities that made him ineligible for the draft, yet he still felt compelled to contribute financially, showing the moral weight citizens felt about the war effort.
• The E.H. Eddy patent solicitor ad claims to have 'abundant reason to believe' his charges are the most moderate—early advertising that relies on vague boasts rather than actual price quotes, a common 1860s marketing tactic.

• Woodman writes that the United States, 'but for slavery and war,' would contain 'as large a population in the year 2000, as there then was on the globe'—a wildly optimistic Malthusian projection that by 2000, America would house the entire global population of 1863. The actual U.S. population in 2000 was about 282 million, while global population was 6 billion.
• The letter mentions Charles Sumner being removed from Senate committees—Sumner was famously caned nearly to death on the Senate floor in 1856 by South Carolina Congressman Preston Brooks; Woodman's reference to Sumner's political exile shows the violence was both physical and institutional.
• Woodman names 'Jesse D. Bright, John M. Mason and B. M. T. Hunter, since expelled from the Senate' as traitors—these were real senators who were actually expelled or resigned for disloyalty during the war, making this letter a contemporary account of dramatic congressional purges.
• He invokes his personal motto: 'Union and Liberty, one and inseparable, now and forever'—this echoes Daniel Webster's famous 1830 Senate speech 'Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable,' showing how deeply 1850s-60s political rhetoric was anchored in earlier nationalist speeches.
• The Sanitary Commission, to which Woodman contributes, would eventually evolve into the American Red Cross—founded in 1881 by Clara Barton, who had worked with the Sanitary Commission during the Civil War.