February 2012

 Camp Porter, Virginia,
Tuesday, Feb. 11, 1862.

Dear Cousin L.:—

“Norton, ‘Putty’ has brought you a valentine this time, I’ll warrant,” said one of my messmates, as I entered the tent last night and flung down my axe (I had been out on fatigue duty all day, making a government road to Washington, for the old roads are impassable on account of the mud). “Well, let me look at it,” said I. and he handed me your letter of the 7th. It was not a valentine, but it pleased me much more than one of those sentimental things would have done.

I presume I do have considerable more time for writing than you do, but your remark about your household cares, etc., made me think of what Mother often says: if she had only one or two children to care for she might have a little time to herself. I see that any one who has a family to care for has enough to do to be constantly busy. From morning till night there is always something to do. I have commenced writing, but that ever recurring question comes again, “What shall I write”? It seems to the soldier when he takes up the pen as though there was nothing to write unless he has something to tell of gallant exploits in his own occupation, a brilliant victory over superior numbers of the enemy, in which he was one of the heroes. With something like that for a text he can write. Pages of foolscap are far too small to contain all he has to relate to his friends then, but, ah me, I’ve no such resource. A man is not a hero till he is shot at and missed. He who is shot at and killed is covered with the sod and forgotten by all but the narrow circle of his immediate friends. His name is once seen in the list of killed at the great victory, but lightly passed over, while the readers turn to honor the heroes who participated in the victory but were shot at and missed.

You want to know something of our “arrangements, beds, meals, etc.” I might describe the interior of our tent in my poor way, and that will serve as a specimen of the whole, though each mess arranges its own tent in any way to suit the members. We have the large round tent, about eighteen feet across the bottom and tapering to a point at the top. A round pole in the center supports it, and, on this pole, two tables are suspended by ropes, one above the other, and so arranged that we can lower them to use as tables or raise them up above our heads. As to beds, we have every style and form that never were seen in a cabinet shop. We used to sleep on the ground or on pine boughs when we had the small or wedge tents, but when we obtained these we concluded to be a little more extravagant. Lumber in Virginia is out of the question. A very patriotic Union man about two miles from here refused to sell me a couple of fence boards six inches wide for $1.50, so I made up my mind to be my own saw-mill. At the time we encamped here, there were hundreds of acres of worn-out tobacco lands grown up with small pines in the neighborhood. They grow very close together, slim and straight. “Necessity is the mother of invention,” says the old adage, and so it proved with us. We cut down any number of the poles, peeled the bark, got a few pounds of nails at the sutler’s and made our bedsteads, or bunks, we call them. They are like berths in a steamer, one above another, room for two above and two below, and for another back under the side of the tent. This, for one side of the tent, accommodates six men ; another like it on the other side, six more. For the “mattress.” or “downy bed,” we hewed the poles flat and rather thin so they spring some and laid them side by side as close as possible. At night we spread our overcoats on the poles, take our knapsacks for pillows, and, covering ourselves with our blankets we enjoy such sleep as many a one who rests in the most luxurious bed might envy. Our robe de nuit is very simple, merely our every day dress, minus cap and boots. My rifle and cartridge box hang by my side, my cap lies on my knapsack, and my boots stand on the ground within my reach every time I sleep, so that, if the long roll beats, I can be with the company in line of battle in two minutes. We retire early, not so much from choice as necessity. At 9 o’clock the “taps” are beaten and all lights must be extinguished. It is rather uninteresting sitting in the dark, so that hour generally finds us “coiled up,” as the boys express it. At daylight the “reveille” is sounded, the men turn out and the roll is called. Soon after breakfast is ready, consisting of bread, meat (pork, bacon or beef) and coffee. We now have our soft bread baked in the regiment, but we have eaten a great many of the crackers, or pilot bread, as it is called. Some of this was good, but the greater part very poor, moldy, wormy, and made of poor flour, etc. Several barrels had crackers stamped “T. Weld & Co., Boston, 1810”; Company I say they had a barrel marked “B. C. 97.” I don’t know whether the crackers or the barrel was made before Christ, but I think it must have been the barrel. We finally concluded that fresh bread, although lacking so many romantic associations, would be more nutritious, so we brought in a fine lot of brick that a secesh had provided to build for himself a fine house, made some splendid ovens, and now we have good bread. We have a little sheet-iron stove in our tent that does very well when it is not too cold, and we can cook a good many little extras, stew dried fruit, etc., and we manage to live quite comfortably. The paper you sent I have not received. It will probably arrive to-night. We have a great many papers. The Washington papers are here before breakfast every morning, the New York papers, “Erald,” Tribune and Times, the day after they are published ; Baltimore and Philadelphia papers the same day, and then we have Frank Leslie’s, Harper’s Weekly, Illustrated News and Forney’s War Press. Friends at home send us the Independent and the Evangelist, the Advocate, the Guardian, etc., so that generally we are well supplied, but we devour papers with a rapidity that would astonish them that have less leisure time.

Last night a man died at the hospital. I can hear the band as they are paying their last respects to his remains. We have lost but one from our company. Poor Pickard died at the hospital in the latter part of January, I have sometimes thought that I could die on the battlefield and be content, but to die in a military hospital, away from my dearest friends, with only the rough hand of a fellow soldier to close my eyes to their last sleep, would be hard to bear. It was a gloomy day when we buried Pickard. Great piles of black clouds came rolling up from the west, and now and then a flake of snow came sailing down, mingling with the dead leaves as they went whirling over the frozen ground till they dropped together into some hollow to lie and be forgotten. I was one of the eight selected as the escort for the body, and I was much impressed with the solemnity and beauty of the military burial. The procession was formed at the hospital, the escort first with arms reversed, the pallbearers with the body, the chaplain, the band, and the company and friends of the dead. The band played a beautiful but mournful dirge, and we moved slowly to the grave. We buried him under a large oak tree on an eminence overlooking a wide prospect of this once beautiful country. Arrived at the grave, the coffin was set down and the chaplain read the beautiful burial service and the body was lowered to its last rest. We fired three volleys over the grave, the drums meanwhile beating a low muffled roll, and then we turned back to camp. Thus rests on the soil of the “Old Dominion” a humble, honest man and a good soldier. Half a dozen miles off sleep the ashes of the “Father of his Country.” The world admires and honors him, and weeps over his grave, and yet, who can say that Adam Pickard, in his humble sphere, did not his duty to his country as well as the immortal Washington? He left his wife and little children when his country needed him, and now his wife is left a widow and his children fatherless. It was a stern fate, but he looked it sternly in the face and died like a true soldier, leaving his family to God and giving his life to his country.