40th New York Infantry

Item LTR-578

Description

8 pages, original Civil War soldier's letter written in period ink and war dated.


Camp Sedgwick
Fairfax County, VA

March 7th 1862, 7 ½ p.m.

Dear Mary,

Yours of the 4th inst. was received yesterday and I fully intended to answer it the same evening, but was prevented by a rush of business, such as payrolls, etc., and could not do it. But I have “sat” down now with the “full intent” of doing or dying (!) You see, it’s of no use for a fellow to expect certainly to take any time to himself for maybe, just when he’s commencing, in will come some job which must be done at once, or ---- well most anything. So that was the way with your letter (that was to be). I had got the “Camp Sedgwick” and the rest of the heading on, when in came an order which had to be issued to all of the Captains, so instead of going on with “Dear Mary” being immensely short of paper out here, I had to write “General Order No. ____” etc. Quite a fall from the sublime to the ridiculous, wasn’t it?

Well, to proceed to what maybe called the answering part of my letter, I had almost given up the hope of receiving any further communication from you, and had begun to think that you must have followed my own example, and ‘written me down an as Shakespeare says. [Drawing on letter]

One of the genus asinus, I certainly must be, by spells, for it seems as if there are periods when I can’t help “putting my foot into it,” and doing all sorts of pumpkin-headed nonsense. But let that be as it is, whoever started the report, which misled my informant, gave rise to a rumor which caused me much pain, and I hope more than I will suffer again during my absence, from any cause.

Your statement of how the thin originated clears up the affair entirely and I cannot imagine a more likely way in which it could have happened. It was quite natural for your friend to have been this misled, for the wish is very often father to the thought; that is, we often get to thinking that what we wish might be the case really is so.

The way you used to serve poor Henry was girl-like “to a dot,” and puts me very much in mind of what I remember of a young lady of my former acquaintance in Philadelphia. It was when I was about 15, and a young man had made a dead set at this demoiselle, which se either didn’t or pretended not to, like very much. He was a regular churchgoer, and quite innocent –wasn’t troubled with too much upper story. He used to come around regularly every evening, Sunday and weekday and inquire, “Is Emma at home?” She used regularly to pop out of the way, sometimes into our house, and sometimes “out-o-doors entirely” and leave the poor fellow all in the downs, to talk to her Pa and Ma. She finally sent the poor boy quite out of countenance and he had quit coming for a year before I left. The last part of the story, though, doesn’t quite suit our case (at least, I hope so) for Kate wrote some time ago that they were pulling together quite well and that she was entirely “too large for her pants” in consequence. She was either a slow coach too, so they are well matched.

Talking about “pants” puts me in mind of our experience. We were lately forced to take some dark blue “unmentionables” got up by the union defense committee of NY, at a cost to us of $3.03 per pair, together with jackets at $5.75 a piece. Both together would have given a large profit at $5.00, so you may imagine the quality of the stuff. It is shoddy of the meanest kind, and you cannot keep them decent for half an hour after eating and brushing, they are as full of dust as ever. Moreover, the cloth is so weak that mine have bursted and ripped everywhere, to other places too. As a natural consequence, our dear, good, old Uncle, who stands being plundered as a matter of course, has had to deal out 900 pairs of sky blues, which look as if they might be better. Whether we’ll get “swallow tails” with them or not, I don’t know.

They’ve a “Mackerel Brigade” somewhere in the army and now they’re going to make a “Terrapin Legion,” for we will henceforth be obliged to carry our houses on our backs, in the shape of 6 feet by 3 of stout oil cloth. Each man carries a piece and two make a tent by typing them together with strings and throwing them across a ridgepole. What a “palatial residence” that will make! But I’m going to put “back buildings” on mine, for I’ve got another “whopping big” one with which I intend to close up the windward end of my tents above and then my comrade and I can truly exclaim with the poet, “everything is lovely and the goose hangs high.”

We don’t expect to get paid off until April, for after our poor, honest, abused contractors get a hundred dollars a piece for their “twenty shilling nags,” and other things accordingly, either the Army of the Potomac or the Army of the West must go unpaid, and Secretary Stanton thinks that as the western boys have never been paid yet, while fighting like Kilkenny cats, and as we’ve been paid regularly while the most of us have done nothing but sit on our “dignities” and banter Jeff to take Washington, that it is about time for the prairie boys to have “a lick at the spigot.” So say I, and cheerfully yield to our brave boys in Tennessee and Missouri, the rights which they have so nobly earned. Never mind though, “us fellers” could only “get a smell at it,” as anybody else. General McClelland begins to speak of the “coming operations of the Army” in General Orders, so they cannot be very far off. When they do come, rebellion will have a sudden death. There will be a terrific tug along the rebel lines at Manassas, and then a reversal of Bull Run all the way to Richmond. I’ll bet a 5 cent sutler’s ticket that the “chivalry” come out ahead in the race.

Heintzelman is a regular bulldog, and did the best fighting at Bull Run, so if his division goes in and “nobody is hurt,” it will be a rather unexpected turn of affairs. I hope to do my duty and whatever may be the event, I trust that the Lord will overlook my infirmities and deal with me according to his everlasting kindness.

The order to start may come before you get this letter, so if I receive your answer at all, it may be well before Manassas. So do not forget me, and pray that we may both meet in peace, and then, Mary, I hope to be that friend to you who you speak of, as far as my natural weakness will permit me. But in saying this, my dear girl, do not wish you to forget the friend that is dearer than all. I know, Mary that I have been a most unworthy professor of religion, and that I have been guilty of many out breaking faults, calculated to bring dishonor on the cause of Jesus; but believe me, when I say that no friendship is like unto his, that no love is so passing delightful as his, when the consciousness of its possession pervades every fiber of ones soul as it does with the soul who has been reconciled to his God. The love of God “she abroad in the heart” is a faithful and true saying, and how true is the saying in dear old hymn.

“Of my Savior possessed,
I was perfectly blessed

As if filled with the fullness of God”

Mary dear, the desire of the human soul for friendship is one of the better parts of our fallen nature, but never can’t be satisfied, if fined upon an earthly object, a frail, sinful human being, like one’s self. With no sustaining power within, no “Rock” that is lighter than thou; my love, no matter how fervent, could ever be satisfactory entirely through life. Earthly love is liable to cruel shocks, to the blight of adversity, and to the cruel pain of non-repayment, at times, or continually. But when our souls are set on the Lord, and when he vouch safes the assurance that he is ours, no tongue that is not glorified can ever express

“the sweet comfort and peace,
of a soul in its earliest love.”

That you may know ere long what that “earliest love” means, in all its beauty, and that you may not, as I have done, do dishonor to your profession of the knowledge of the Lord, may He grant for Christ’s sake. He granted it to me once, in the winter of 1858, and oh, that I had never turned aside from the paths of peace!

Even now, after years of coldness and contempt for the once loved teachings of our Lord, my poor, black soul cries out to him that is able to save, with an exceeding loud and bitter cry.

Oh, may it become an effectual, fervent prayer of Now, Now, Oh Lord, have mercy upon me a sinner!

I must close, so commending you and yours to the watch care of our Lord, and in the fervent hope of a happy reunion.

I am as ever,

Yours,
John H. B. Jenkins

Miss Mary A. Benjamin
Care of John Lewis Jenkins, Esq.
Smyrna, Delaware

P. S. We have changed our Adjutant. Our present one is named James E. Mallon. We have also got a new Brigadier General, General D. B. Birney, and our camp is now named Camp Sedgwick, in respect to General Sedgwick, who has gone to take command of General Stone’s Division, on the lower Potomac. General Stone has been arrested for treason.

So my address now is,

Care of Adjutant J. E. Mallon
40th (Mozart) Regiment, New York Volunteers
Camp Sedgwick, Fairfax County, VA

I hope yours will soon be:
Mrs. John H. B. Jenkins, etc., etc.,

Don’t you wish so too? I suppose you will ask, “Where is etc., etc., and what kind of a place is it!” I’ll tell you, it’s a place where there is a good deal of hugging, and where little curly headed boys and girls are going to be “as thick as blackberries,” and twice as good.