58th Pennsylvania Infantry - Wounded at New Bern, NC

Item LTR-7036

Description

Original Civil War soldier's letter. 7 pages written in period ink.


Camp Suffolk, Va.
Dec. 4, 1862

My Dear Friend.

I received your last sometime ago but have been too busy to answer it before. Our camp is at last completed and we are prepared for the winter. We had a heavy rain storm yesterday but it has cleared off. Again warm and pleasant. We have settled down again into the old routine of camp guard duty and picket varied by an occasional scout or raid out on the Blackwater. We generally find the Rebs at Carsville about halfway to Blackwater. They invariably make but a slight resistance and retreat rapidly to the river. Our forces follow them until they pass the river, a few shots are exchanged and we get orders to fall back. The Rebs advance so that by the time we have got back to camp, they reoccupy Carsville. They left in a hurry the other day. Thought they were coming in to capture our pickets with a large force of cavalry and rocket battery. The General heard of it and sent out Col. Spear with the 11th Penn Cavalry and a brigade of infantry. They came upon the Rebs at daybreak as they were cooking their breakfast. The firearms on either side owing to the wet weather would not explode. The cavalry charged. The Rebs, as usual, made tracks pretty fast in the direction of Franklin. A breakneck race for several miles ensued. Our boys captured one of their pieces and several prisoners. Good horses saved the rest.
Five regiments of the drafted men came here this week. One of them is camped along side us.

The Rebs will hardly know Suffolk when they get back. Where once were five plantations, now are five large forts and miles of breastwork. Hundreds of acres of timber has been felled and before Spring there will be thousands more. Fences are burned and houses and barns torn down and military roads cut in every direction. Verily, Virginia is paying the price for her treason. A price that a hundred years of prosperity will not repay. You have no idea of the destruction of property an army will commit. Well has it been said that like an army of locusts they devour the land. Every species of property that a soldier can use is unhesitatingly taken and as the boys say, “confiscated.” But I think it is time Virginia was recreated by fire or flood and the present imbecile population destroyed or awakened to a sense of their duty to themselves and the world. The first settled, she should be the best cultivated. But so far from it is the case, that she is one hundred years behind the age. Last Monday I was on picket out on the Edenton road. Around the station were no less than five different growths of timber where old plantations had been worn out and suffered to grow up again. They clear up a piece of land, work it twenty or thirty years and then allow it to grow up again. The way farming is practiced here is a disgrace to any country or any age, but I think that peace will bring about a different state of things. The richness of the soil attracts very much the attention of the eastern soldiers. So different from their own rocky soil and from what I can learn, many a one will make Virginia his future home.

Myself and Sergeant Hadley have been out this morning trying our revolvers. We came back satisfied that our nerves were not in proper condition for close shooting. I played chess all day yesterday and some today and tomorrow I have got to go on camp guard. I don’t like this part of it at all. Picketing is getting to be dull business around. They have not fired at for sometime and scarcely passes on the road and then the nights are getting cold and fires are not allowed. In the summer I could spread my blanket on the ground and sleep as soundly as on a feather bed. But these white frosts someway or other find their way through blankets and overcoats and drive away all thoughts of sleep. The boys grumble at its some and some regiments keep fires all night. But hard as it may seem, it is right, for the line of fires shows the exact position of the pickets and tells the enemy where to attack. And a blue overcoat in the flaring light makes rather too tempting a mark to be exposed to a bushwhacker’s aim. I had considerable trouble to keep the fires out. It was very warm until after midnight. The wind changed to the north and before morning it was freezing. The men do not seem to realize that they expose their lives thereby as well as the safety of the camp. The boys of the 130th N. Y. are in a swearing humor today. They have just got their winter quarters built; their camp nicely graded and drained. An immense amount of labor. I was nearly three weeks working on ours with from 30 to 100 men on the grading and ditching alone. And then there is the labor of cutting and carrying timber for 100 small houses besides commissary and other buildings. And now they have to move about a mile to another camp where we were camped when we first came here and one of the drafted regiments takes their place. They make some of the most inexcusable blunders here I ever saw.

I had a letter from Olive the other day. We are all anxiously awaiting the advent of Uncle Sam’s paymaster. There being some five months pay due us. I am afraid, Ett, that I am not writing a very interesting letter. I will try and do better next time. So good bye. Write soon.

From your friend,
Wm W. Wells