72nd Illinois Infantry & 5th Veteran Reserve Corps - Wounded at Vicksburg

Item LTR-10661

Description

Original Civil War soldier's letter. 6 pages, written in period ink.


Company D
5th Regiment Veteran Reserve Corps
Burnsides Barracks
Indianapolis, Indiana

June 28th 1864

Dear Sister,

I have just received yours of June 23rd and am glad to hear that you and yours are in good health. And hope that you will continue to enjoy the same. My health is good at present. I had a letter from home dated June 17th. My family was in good health and our relatives about there generally are well. P. B. Cole has 7 girls and one boy. The boy was born in May or June. They don’t say exactly when. I am very much please with your letter and would be glad if I could write one that would be as interesting to you as yours was to me.

29th. It is raining a little today. It has been rather too dry and hot so far this season for successful crop raising. Grain will be rather light. It has been very dry in Fulton County, Illinois. You wanted to know how or where my wound was. Well, I will tell you as near as I can. Just as I fired my gun, before I had moved from the position my arm was then in, the ball struck just below my elbow on the under side of my arm and cut across and come one inch and a half below the elbow. Then went in about two inches above the elbow and came out one inch and a half from my body. It did not touch my body or shoulder at all. It cut off a nerve just below the elbow. That weakens my hand some and my little finger are numb and feel as though they was asleep all the time. When I use my hand a little too much or lift much with it. I have some pain in my hand and wrist, but no pain where the wound was.

At the time I was wounded, I lost a great deal of blood. It was as much as I could do to walk one mile from where I was wounded to get to the ambulance. Then I had to ride two miles before I could get my arm dressed. The third morning after when they went to dress my arm. He said it was mortified. It was black and yellow from three inches below my elbow to my shoulder. He called the doctor to me and he looked two minutes before he said anything. Then he said it was not mortified yet. He had flaxseed poultice put on it and had it changed three times a day for nine days before the inflammation got out. Two days after it got to aching severely and soon the pain began to run in my side and came very near throwing me into lock jaw. The doctor attended to me pretty close for a while and gave me some powerful doses of medicine and poulticed my arm or I should not be here. Well, I guess enough about that.

A piece of a cap struck in my right eye and cut through the film and the inflammation got in it and from that to the other and made me almost blind for six weeks and they was very weak until in the winter. They are pretty good now, though not as good as before.

We have bakers’ bread and beef, pork and beans and some new potatoes to eat and coffee three times a day to drink. Have tolerable good barracks, board bunks, straw bed and one woolen blanket and overcoat for bed and bedding. The work is guard duty one day and night in three, sometimes oftener and sometimes not quite so often – drills and dress parade, and cleaning up our streets and quarters, and many other things that our benevolent officers can contrive to keep us out of mischief.

We are having a little easier time just now than we have had before since we have been here. The 28th Ohio Regiment is here helping guard the prisoners of which there is 4,500 now and more on the way here. The 28th Ohio brought 1,000 when they came here. The prisoners had as good grub as we did until 1 month ago [when] they cut down their rations about one half by order of the War Department in retaliation of their treatment of our men. Their quarters is nearly as good as ours. There is twenty acres in the prison yard (or bull pen as we call it). There [are] near 20 barracks 50 feet long, 20 wide, and one about 300 feet long besides a good many smaller buildings and about two or 300 tents. They have hospitals and doctors and nurses to take care of the sick.
Last winter was rather hard on the rebel prisoners. Some days there was 8 or ten died a day. Now they do not more than one die a day on an average. The burying ground where they bury the rebels we call Governor Morton’s Colony and there is a great many in it all ready and I wish they was all there. I guess I have wrote enough about the rebs for this time.

Alva was born August 20, 1861. Lovina [was born] December 8th 1854. I would like to know Osman Markham’s Post Office address. Uncle Sam has got some land for me somewhere and I guess I shall try to find it when I get out of the service if I do not find it before. I hope you will write again soon. What of Old John H. Rice?
I remain your brother with respect and esteem,
Samuel D. Cole
To Ruby C. Merrill
Do not send any more stamps. I had 21 when I got your letter.