18th Mississippi Infantry-Wounded & Captured 3 Times: Fredericksburg, Gettysburg & Sailors Creek

Item CON-6600

Description

Original Civil War Prisoner of War Confederate letter, 1 page written in period ink.

Wounded at Fredericksburg - December 16, 1862
Captured at Fredericksburg - May 3, 1863
Wounded & Captured at Gettysburg - July 2, 1863
Wounded & Captured at Sailor's Creek - April 6, 1865


Hospital, Johnson Island, June 17, 1864

My Dear Friend,

Your very kind note of 11th inst. was received this morning and imitating your own promptness, I hasten to reply to it this evening and to thank you for your kindness in answering it so quickly. It is indeed a great difficulty which we labor under in being restricted to one page letters, and I am curious that you cannot lament such a state of things more than I do, or even half so much. Will you allow me to suggest that paper of this size is not considered contraband, but that there is as yet no restriction upon the number of letters which we are to receive.

You can have no idea, being free and surrounded by numberless sources of amusement, what an event the arrival of a letter from an outside friend is to us. It is the connecting link with that great world from which we have been too long banished out, convinces us that we are not yet entirely forgotten in our wearisome captivity. I was not surprised, Miss Virginia, at your mentioning me in your letter to Colonel Luse. I have seen too much of the disinterested kindness of your sex since my imprisonment, to wonder at so natural a manifestation of interest in the friend of your friends.

You speak of writing to Leesburg upon the slightest provocation. Will you please tell me how you are able to get letters to that portion of the world? I have endeavored time and again to hear from there, always unsuccessfully however. So that I begin to think there is a fatality attending my efforts. I have beard recently of the marriage of two of my friends, there. Misses Smart and Bentley, and I live in daily expectation not to use a stronger word, of learning that others in whom I am more interested have done likewise. Such a thing would not surprise me. May I hope to hear from you again and often?

Very truly your Friend,
J. F. Sessions