15th Pennsylvania Infantry

Item LTR-582

Description

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

Camp Johnson
Lancaster, PA

May 22nd 1861

Mr. A. H. Albert

Dear Sir,

Yours of the 18th was received by me this morning and was indeed happy to hear from you and that you are all well and may God bless you and all your family. I can with pleasure say I am well at present too, and hope these few lines may find you still enjoying the same blessing. As you would like to know what kind of rifles we have, we have only got those old flint look muskets. They are new but the locks are altered, nevertheless they are not fit to fight with. But we were informed by our Captain that we are to get new rifles. We have not got our uniforms yet, but I think we will get them in a day or two. It is also time that we get them, because our clothes are almost worn out, and the change is all. We were also informed that the paymaster will be round one of these days. I hope he will I wish you could come to see us and see the parade when the two regiments are out. It is worth seeing. It is a beautiful sight to see. All the companies’ parade. Today we are on guard so we don’t parade today. We are on guard twenty-four hours, but are relieved every two hours. We come on every ten days. That is, our company guards are stationed all round the camp to prevent the soldiers of going out to town. We are kept very strict here. You would also like to know how I like to be a soldier. I like it pretty well but our boarding of a pretty hard kind. Dry bread, coffee and mess pork in the morning and dinner, bean soup and rice. Soup changed every day. It seems rather hard to a person if he was always used to good boarding as I was to have it changed so at once. However, we can live on it. There is no danger of starvation yet. If we always get it as good, we cannot complain much. I expect we will come to Fort Delaware, below Philadelphia next, if we are taken away from this place. At least it is the talk. So I must come to a close for the present by hoping you to write soon again to your friend.

Give my respects to all your inquiring friends. No more at present.

Yours very respectfully, etc.,

D. S. Seibert