My Dear Wife,
I received your letter today just as we came in from drill and as you did not seem disposed to write much I will try to write enough to make up the deficiency myself. I have been sick and I am not very well now but I manage to keep about. I have a bad cough but I think it is a little better. I want you to send me some money immediately. I have written for it before but you either haven’t received the letter or you forgot to say anything about it, but I want it very much as we don’t know when we shall get any pay from the government. Perhaps it will be a long time as they have not paid the troops that have been out here since last July, nearly five months. You at home know but very little what a soldier has to endure. We have seen but a very little of war yet but we shall see it before next July. I don’t know what disposition will be made of us but perhaps we shall stay where we are this winter and next spring we shall have to march. If we don’t have better quarters than we have got we shall all be sick. I expect to have the mumps. One of our company has got them and we shall all have them and we are in a pretty fix to have any kind of disease but we must do as well as we can. I expect we shall see as much of the rough side of the world as any regiment that ever came here. Some of the companies have acted so mean. Our Lieutenants don’t know as much as a sucking skunk¹ especially Lt. Roberts and besides all that he is mean, although I never have had any trouble with him yet. I despise any man that will take an underhanded way to get into office. Burnside is advancing on Richmond and if he can’t take it, this war will never be closed by the force of arms. You can get more news at home that we can here. The news today is that Stonewall Jackson is marching upon Fairfax Court House twenty miles from us but how he is to take it without heavy loss is a question for him to work, for Sigel² is in the vicinity with a large force but Jackson is a bad man to handle. Our army is large enough to whip the south but the end of the war as yet is a great ways off. I am sorry that the old mare is sick. I expected that she would die if the worms were not taken away from her. That is what ails her for she is full of them and that is the reason that she was so poor. We have got some ticks today filled with straw³ and we are made a little more comfortable and I understand we are to have our tents stockade and a floor laid so we shall be quite comfortable if this is done. It begins to look to some as though we are going into winter quarters but we may be ordered away after all. We don’t know what orders we many have and I don’t know as it makes any difference to me for I like to change residences and one place is just as much home to me as the other, but still there is no place like little old Rhode Island and if I ever get back again money will never buy my liberty again. When I say this I express not only my opinion but the sentiments of the whole company. There is some poor soldiers buried here almost every day. The band plays a dirge and it sounds so solemn it is enough to make the stoutest heart shed tears. These men left their homes in the old granite state⁴ but a few weeks ago with bright visions of the future but alas their dreams are not realized and many of us too may, if we do not fall in battle, be the victims of the same destroyer. Yet it depends much on what care we take of ourselves. I shall try to take good care of myself as I can with the limited means that I have to do with. Now be sure and send me some money for my boots need tapping⁵ and if they get any worse shall wet my feet and take more cold and if I should keep taking cold it will certainly make me down sick, but I must close my letter for I am tired. I did think of writing more but I think I will wait until some other time. Take good care of yourself and not worry about me for I shall be quite well in a few days .
From your loving Husband,
Ezra
¹An egg-sucking skunk
²Franz Sigel (1824-1902) was a German American military officer, revolutionist and immigrant to the United States who was a teacher, newspaperman, politician, and served as a Union major general in the American Civil War.
³Straw Tick is a bed mattress made from a coarse cotton material, or shoddy, and filled with (usually) straw.
⁴New Hampshire is the granite state
⁵Tapping might mean re-soling boot
