To Mrs. Lyon.
Camp Clear Creek, Miss., July 28, 1862.—So you fear my good spirits are assumed. Nary a bit of it. With an appetite that enables me to eat two rations. with physical vigor that keeps me free from an ache or a pain and lets me sleep on the hard earth as soundly and sweetly as I ever did on the softest bed, with a tolerably good looking, middle aged wife and two cute children ‘up North,’ with the consciousness of doing my duty, and an increasing habitual reliance upon the protection of Divine Providence, why shouldn’t I be in good spirits!
Should you hear rumors that the North is whipped, you need not believe it. ‘Tis no such thing. History doesn’t tell of so successful a campaign as ours has been since the first of February. Some reverses were to be expected, but no Government ever conducted a war on so large a scale with so few reverses as has ours. Slavery will be wiped out. The South will be subdued, and any nation on earth that interferes with us will get war until it is tired of it.
