15th Connecticut Infantry - Great Description of Fort Monroe's Guns & Ammunition

Item LTR-10278

Description

Original Civil War soldier's letter. 2 pages, written in period ink.


Suffolk, Virginia
Monday, March 16, 1863

My dear cousin Charlie,
When I wrote you last, I forgot where I was, but if I don’t have my letters very well connected, you will consider that we are subject to many changes and it is unnecessary for me to make excuses. In your letter which you last wrote, you mentioned riding on the cars and I think that you must have heard about it from Sam. Speaking about Sam puts one in mind that he is pretty fast boy. Florence says that he beats his brother entirely going to see the girls and it’s my opinion that if he is worse than me, he must be pretty well up in the world. Sam it seems thought that there was danger of your becoming entangled in the meshes of love and I hope if such is the case, that he has been kind enough to do his best to help you out. That is, if you need any help.
You asked in your letter if there were any such hills in Virginia as in old Connecticut. I reckon there are some and there were some in the rear of the City of Fredericksburg which none were able to climb – at least none of the Union soldiers. We had a fine place for encampment at Newport News and it really seemed much like home because I had such a view of the water. I sometimes fancied when looking across the James River that I was looking across Long Island Sound and that Long Island was in the distance for the river is from six to seven miles wide.
During our stay in Newport News, I had a pass one day to visit Fortress Monroe. I went on the boat free of charge and returned having quite an interesting time. I could not get in the fort but I saw the famous guns – the Lincoln and Floyd. I tell you, they were monsters. On weighed 52,005 pounds and the other 49,097, if I remember rightly. The heaviest one carries a shot which weighs 500 pounds and has carried a shot to Sewall’s Point, a distance of upwards of five miles. The heaviest one is s rifled gun and the ball is part of iron and part of lead. The lead is expended by the powder when fired and fills the grooves. The heaviest shot is the shape [see sketch] and the slug shot this [see sketch]. These latter are considered the most effective for the demolishing of ironclads and weigh 450 pounds. These shot are about two feet long and 15 inches in diameter. Shell are also used of the same shape. The size of the gun I cannot very well describe. I should think it was at least twenty feet long and the diameter at the breach is as good as five feet. I should like first rate to have you see them. I should hate to be on the Merrimac or any ironclad and have such a shot fired at the vessel. The fort is built for nine hundred guns but there are only about 850 mounted now, yet the work is going on.
We left Newport News last Friday onboard of a boat and arrived at Norfolk in about three hours and spent the night there. The next morning, we went on a train of cars and after riding through a wilderness, or though Dismal Swamp as it is put down in Geography, we find ourselves in the town of Suffolk surrounded by a wilderness. For seven or eight miles we rode through a part of the Great Dismal Swamp and I think it dismal too. It is the most dismal place that I have been in, that is certain. It is real saucy looking hole. We are surrounded by swamps and forests and there is nothing to be seen after we get away from the trenches and fortifications which surround us. The Dismal Swamp is southwest from us and we are on low, level, and damp ground – just the place for fevers. We are distant from Norfolk 23 miles and from Norfolk to Fort Monroe is 18 miles, and we are only seven or eight miles from North Carolina.
I am quite well and in pretty good spirits considering the dismal country which surrounds us. I have weighed once within two or three weeks 148 pounds and under, if you can beat that. Write soon. Give my best regards to all the friends, Uncles, Aunts and cousins.
From your affectionate cousin,
Henry