18th Massachusetts Infantry - Wounded at Fredericksburg

Item LTR-8558

Description

Original Civil War soldier's letter. 4 pages, written in period ink.


Virginia
December 29th 1861

Friend Samuel,

I have been thinking for a long time of writing to you. But we have been having a new uniform and new tents and everything was in a hurrah (Zouave Uniform). And we have just got settled. I like camp life tip top except we don’t have many females. Most all the boys complain but only 2 years and 8 months longer. I see Tom Smith very often. I get just as much as I can stick down my stomach. Today for instance, we have roast turkey and fixings for dinner. I am not in the ranks now but if we stay 3 years, I shall come home in the ranks. You may bet on that. There is not much news out here at present. But we have a camp rumor this morning that as soon as Burnsides’ Expedition starts, that this Division (Porter’s Division) would start after it. I hope it is so. Want to have a little music to face but not a Bull Run fight. I have thought some of having a furlough to come home. But if we go south, I think I shall follow. I have been on picket once and expect to go again tomorrow and to be there New Year’s or rather come in New Year’s.

You must excuse me for not writing more and sooner. But if I don’t know what to write, I can’t write that’s so (so be it I tell you). I suppose that everything is as usual in Quincy, is it not? If I had wrote on a sheet as small as you did, I might have been able to have filled it but a whole one this size, I should have wanted to have more to say than I know of now. I believe I have everything confidentially this time, don’t you think so?

Yours for Uncle Abe,

H. A. Thomas

Write soon.

Sam Saml Saml
I’m asked to write
So out of spite
I’ll take my flight
And leave you wondering Sam