"My Dear Wife..." Letters from a Civil War Soldier

Transcript

Fort Saint Leron, Camp Kenyon, Department of the Gulf of New Orleans, La., March 11, 1864

My Dear Wife,

I now take my pen in hand to address you with a few lines to let you know that I am quite well at present, hoping these few lines will find you the same. We had a dreadful thunder shower, worse than in the middle of the summer at home. It commenced on the night of the 8th and lasted until the next day, just at sunset when it stopped and cleared up all at once.

I would like to have you send me some boneset(1) for my cold. I am pretty well with the exception of a cold. Consumption has set in and I cough so, I have to sit up in the bed. I was in the city of New Orleans on the 7th of the month and I have got all over my chills and fever.

All the letters I sent I have not gotten and answer yet. I don’t know what is the reason as this is the fifth letter. I must safely say that those teas those ladies made for medid me a great deal of good and I think them very much and if it had not been for them, I don’t know I should have been able to get over the fever and ague. I think a great deal about home, for I sit evenings all alone and think of home all the time. I am in a very large tent and it’s very lonely in a large tent unless somebody comes in once and a while. Mr. Benjamin and Elisha Barker(2) came to see me and Mr. Gainer(3) slept with me last night. Mr. James Seymore(4) came up to see me tonight and Mr. Jacob Smith(5) was over to see me last night.

I have to go to New Orleans once in 20 days and get rations for the men, that is provisions, that is 20-days rations. And that is the only time it appears to look like home. I have not received a penny of my monthly pay yet nor all of my bounty. Once in every five days I have [some] work to do and then I sit around like a drooping turkey thinking about home. I have good deal of figuring out to do but it is not like lifting and straining.

There is more or less a death in one of the companies every day. They die off like rotten sheep, for time there is one buried, there is another waiting to be buried. The doctor says it is not a cold but inflammation of the lungs and I waited too long before I went to him. I want you to have that place fixed so that if me or you should die, it will always be a good home for Sis as long as she lives.(6) The reason I say so I don’t know how soon it may be my turn for some are taken in the morning and die before night.

We have meetings every night when it is fit weather. We have had but two rains since we have been here and we have been here six weeks the 13th of the month. We have been most six months in the Army and there is no more sight of getting a furlough than the first day I enlisted, as they say there is none to be given under three years. Therefore, I don’t expect to see you until my time is out, if I should live, although the regulations read different from that, [and] I did havesome hopes of coming home. You must write as often as you can. I should like to get you to straighten my legs out once more. I want to see that daguerreotype bad. If I had it you don’t know how proud I should feel, as it would do me a good deal of good to look at it.

Give my love to all and kiss them all for me, especially to Mother Weeks.(7) Give my love to the old man Weeks,(8) Mother Tierce(9), the old man Tierce(10), and all enquiring friends; and find out where Solomon(11) is, the name of the place, and how he is. Give my love to Mr. and Mrs. Sutherland(12), and Emma(13) and Lucy(14).

I was shoemaking(15) for two of the boys in the company today and I had the wax ends and I should like to have had the pinchers and shoehammer but you need not take the trouble to send them [all the] way here. I guess you had better let them stay where they are.

Write to me if you received that money I sent home to you by Rachel Maxwell(16), or not. If you have, write as soon as you get this and let me know and also there was $150 to be sent by the allotment commissioners. So good night.