Dear sir ’pen in hand to hat you know that we are all wel. also that we was sorry you could not come horn.  They took on terribul.  Hope she wrote a letter.  Said she had not herd from you. also that somebody wrote to her you was goin to be married.  You had oughter write her a letter, Bill.  Looks to me so you hain’t used her right.  Shes a comm horn in July.  Sowed corn to day in the gardin.  David is off byin catul.  I hope God will take care uv you, boy, so goodbye from yours truly

EbenHolden

I wrote immediately to Uncle Eb and told him of the letters I had sent to Hope, and of my effort to see her.

Late in May, after Virginia had seceded, some thirty thousand of us were sent over to the south side of the Potomac, where for weeks we tore the flowery fields, lining the shore with long entrenchments.

Meantime I wrote three letters to Mr Greeley, and had the satisfaction of seeing them in the Tribune.  I took much interest in the camp drill, and before we crossed the river I had been raised to the rank of first lieutenant.  Every day we were looking for the big army of Beauregard, camping below Centreville, some thirty miles south.

Almost every night a nervous picket set the camp in uproar by challenging a phantom of his imagination.  We were all impatient as hounds in leash.  Since they would not come up and give us battle we wanted to be off and have it out with them.  And the people were tired of delay.  The cry of ‘ste’boy!’ was ringing all over the north.  They wanted to cut us loose and be through with dallying.

Well, one night the order came; we were to go south in the morning — thirty thousand of us, and put an end to the war.  We did not get away until afternoon — it was the 6th of July.  When we were off, horse and foot, so that I could see miles of the blue column before and behind me, I felt sorry for the mistaken South.  On the evening of the 18th our camp-fires on either side of the pike at Centreville glowed like the lights of a city.  We knew the enemy was near, and began to feel a tightening of the nerves.  I wrote a letter to the folks at home for post mortem delivery, and put it into my trousers pocket.  A friend in my company called me aside after mess.

‘Feel of that,’ he said, laying his hand on a full breast.

‘Feathers!’ he whispered significantly.  ’Balls can’t go through ’em, ye know.  Better n a steel breastplate!  Want some?

‘Don’t know but I do,’ said I.

We went into his tent, where he had a little sack full, and put a good wad of them between my two shirts.

’I hate the idee o’bein’hit ‘n the heart,’ he said.  ’That’s too awful.

I nodded my assent.

‘Shouldn’t like t’have a ball in my lungs, either,’ he added. ’ ’Tain’t necessary fer a man t’die if he can only breathe.  If a man gits his leg shot off an’ don’t lose his head an’ keeps drawin’ his breath right along smooth an even, I don’t see why he can’t live.