4/63 Long Letter Siege of Suffolk, Fighting, Fraternizing Pickets and Religion

Description: Condition as seen. Extremely long letter from multiple writing sessions about the doings in April of 1863 during Corcoran's Irish Legion at Suffolk from an Artilleryman. Great Content from a soldier called Waldo. Suffolk, Va, ThursdayApril 30, 1863 My dear Sister _____, I am sorry two weeks has slipped away since the reception of your letter without an answer being before this on its way to _____. But so it is and the “investment of Suffolk” is my excuse. I have just finished a short letter to Bennett of the Blackeyes. I got your letter from my trunk to see where to direct it, got my paper, pen and ink all ready when all at once I became conscious that I could not call to mind her given name and therefore how could I direct the letter to her, unless indeed I directed it to “Miss Blackeyed Bennett Mills’ Mills etc”? Forthwith began to call to mind all the female names I could think of and happening to think of a girl I met in Norfolk by the name of Lizzie & clapped my hands and ejaculated “Eliza!” And was pretty sure I had it. Is not that her Christian name? At any rate, to make sure, I directed the letter to “Miss Eliza “Blackeyed” Bennett” and I recon twill reach her if the remainder of the direction is accurate.Were you ever besieged? If so, you know a little how to appreciate our situation here ever since the 11th of this month. Ah! By the way, did that “minister” you leave me to infer you refer to besiege with the ______ of “regular approaches”, or did he carry the works by storm? But I forget; you are in sober earnest and wish for an honest candid reply __ you seriously, considerately, confidentially and solemnly. Shade of Sappho! What an adjuration. By my soul! If I don’t take the matter seriously after all that I should deserve a _____ for a _____ and for fear of such an unattainable calamity blighting my matrimonial expectations, I assure you I do “take the matter seriously into consideration.” I imagine the minister – R.B. (Reverend Benedict’s) I conceive the authorial Sarah, wife of that happy apostle, I suppose the parish beholds the congregation. I perceive the preacher & see his wife sitting in the pew, gazing with upturned, reverent optics at her beloved husband as the words of the sermon drop from his lips, listening aunibus erectis (as Virgil hath it).. I entertain a conception of her at the parsonage with her husband attending assiduously to her duties (executing a “critical reading” of the ___ Sunday’s sermons” enlarging revising and correcting” it). I behold her President of this society and that society and the other society and still another society all daily or nightly meeting and several more holding weekly meetings. Exercising my imagination of this may do I “take the matter seriously in consideration” and reply deliberately. Here is your questions: “Don’t you think I’d make a good minister’s wife”? (I may _____ the way, that I sincerely hope you won’t make yourself the wife of any minister, but a “good” one). Here is my answer: ______ if you love the minister and the minister loves you, I think you’d make him a good wife! I so. This is my “solemn, serious” answer to your “solemn, serious” question.And now, I want to in my turn, as you “one solemn, serious questions.” From what you know of me, what kind of a girl, what “character” of a woman should I mary in order to be happy as I am capable of being? I suggest who characters – “you can as many _____ as you think best). Viz! The lively, sparkling, vivacious, intelligent, affectionate, good hearted girl, and the deep hearted, thoughtless, truly religious intellectual, accomplished woman loving with all the strength and tenderness of a Mrs. Browning. There! I’ve given you two ____ as we say in _______. Now respond. Saturday, May 3Commencing last evening about 5 o’clock, for about 2 hours, we had a mighty fierce engagement with the Rebs west of us. A small force of our troops was sent across the Nansemond by the “south quay bridge” while Fort Nansemond opened a cannonade upon ___ ____ posted in their rifle pits. Our infantry drove them from their first line of entrenchments when their left which had remained quiet up to this time, opened a fierce _____ fire in our line, causing it to fall back. During this time reinforcements were seen double quicking down by the edge of the woods, and into these we poured our bursting shrapnel, slaughtering them finely. These several times did they attempt to send reinforcements that way and each time as they made their appearance did our artillery throw them into confusion and ___. Ah! It would have done your soul good to have seen my 32 pounder Howitzer send the shrapnel over till they got just above the rifle pits and then bust, scattering a shower of musket balls and fragments of the shell right down amongst them. What a slaying of limbs and chorus of _____ there were. So to infantry officers who were over there say, Well the Rebs, it’s jolly secesh got entirely the most of that afternoon’s work anyhow. An now I understand quite “lay & force is going out tomorrow morning the ____ way to make an earnest attach on the graybacks. If they do, will have another very lively time and another fine opportunity for target practice”.The weather of this month thus far has been very mild and lovely indeed. I have moved into my new cottage but ___ _____ _____ 11th ____. I have been compelled to suspend operations for the completion but even with incompleted state it makes a very pretty summer house and comfortable and ____ artery’s. If the Rebs get to firing cannons at us, however, they could ____ it in very hot _____. Well, si Dei coleus sit, esto. Bad Latin but goodnight…..Waldo Sunday morning, _______But so uncivilized are we enter that it seems no more like “the holy Sabbath day” than any other day. ____ ____ The expedition I spoke of did not come off this morning. “Everything is quiet on the Nansemond and in a thick fog. I quit for breakfast having to up considerably earlier this morning than usual. 1 p.m. Well about 8 ½ o’clock this morning, I went down town to see the 9th NY off for home. As they were starting a whole division was ______ across the R.R. down Main Street to cross the Nansemond by the Drawbridge, on a big reconnaissance accompanied by 2 batteries of artillery and some cavalry. So they will do some thing probably. On our front, (western) for a few hours this forenoon there was by mutual consent a _____ of sharpshooters and picket firing. The Rebs came down to their side of the river bank and our boys to theirs and several came across in a ___ from our side and a like number went from ours. One rebel lieutenant crossed. They are very rough looking, more particularly as to uniform. One whom I saw and talked with a little, was a Mississippian, had been in the service 2 years and his time was not yet up. I tell you rough and uncouth as was his external appearance, there was a fearless resoluteness in his aspect the I could not help admiring and as he complied with a request of a federal soldier to give him (f.s.) a drink from his canteen, I thought how long a time would elapse before these very two men perhaps who had just given and received a common token of hospitality, might be firing at each other as as wild beasts. And sure enough, they have begun again. I can hear their muskets bang! Bang! Crack! As I write and a little while ago as I was on its west side of my cottage. Whizzz! Chug! Came a rifle ball right in front of me. It is no new thing for their rifle balls to whistle around our ears. Two of my men have been wounded already, one as he was standing in the door of his own tent, in the knee.You must have had a great times at the closing exercises of your school. What a knack you seem to have for setting up such affairs. And do you remember about that great “drama” we talked so much about setting up that time at Geneseo, and which finally failed. I suppose though the dullness ___ ___ of comprehension on the part of the male sec actors? Ah well, that was a great time we had there. I presume you remember too the walk we two had on the way to “Fall Creek,” and the conversation by the way? How you took me into your confidence, somewhat, and revealed to me various little _____ and hopes and fears, telling me all the while, as you did about ____ _____ ____ manage question. That it was strictly _____? And then when we had arrived at the Fare and it was proposed to descend the precipice, you would have no one but me. I say it I confess with considerable satisfaction both simultaneously and subsequently, to help you down the step, rough rocky path. You know we “hand men” do so like to have you “gentler women” confide in us and trust us and our strength! This being the case, I acknowledge that, the confidence and trust having been given, they should be sacredly kept (which isn’t always the case as you like to remind us). But I’m sure I’ve kept mine with yours and you yours with me, and we have certainly shown considerable trust in one another. Then that reconnaissance down the stream somehow it is pleasant this beautiful, _____ ___ day to recall those scenes and circumstances. There was but one thing about the entire affair I didn’t like. That was when you wept so piteously when the Commissioner “went back on us” so fiercely for being gone. The dear cool black yees of the Bennett saw through it at once and she spoke and acted accordingly. So would you had your reflected enough ___ but there is so much of impulsive feeling in your character that you have feelings then guided you instead of judgement. Well, I thought, to myself I don’t like her any less for it rather more if anything. It is the circumstance I don’t like.But it passed as every little fracas passes, leaving everybody as well enough pleased with every body as before and besides a nice little story to tell and ———— I have to _____ Que ________? Lepeusez? Ah bien! Mon _____. Bad, bad, bad French you may say but I say I don’t care if it is. So there ______Now another thing. Your letter was not too long at all at all and I wish you’d do so more but what was that something more very particular “that you had to tell me and did not”? Tell me in your next. By the way I hereby return to your possession a part of a letter your sister I think, the Bonnie Mary you have told me so much about. You must have probably put it in by mistake. Perhaps you had written a P.S. to me and mistook to for it. If so, I suppose my P.S. went to your darling sister. Tit for tat. I advise you to be more careful in future. Suppose what I return had been a part of a letter, not to or sister but to the minister! Only suppose it I say _____ your Pgelinks, phaucie his pkelinks, phaucie my pkelinks! What ___ ____ ___ catastrophe!What makes me think you ever cry? I never say you cry! Aha, my female friend, my forgetful companion of the precipitous rambles, you disremember do you how you cried in the vestibule and how I saw it. Eh? Well, I think you cry because you feel like crying and afterwards you feel relieved by that process ________. REMEMBER THIS(I think I have answered all) of your questions in your last letter but I regret to say I have asked you twice and now as k you for the third time what the commentary it was on the poetry you sent me that made you feel so “sad”? If I remember a right, I affixed this ____ emphasized to something in the _____ (I’ve forgotten what) “not true” or “not so” or some thing to that _____. Now answer me, sil vous plait.)Evening. I have a little incident to relate. Just before dusk, while the Rebs were sending their rifle balls whizzing over her, I lay down on my iron bedstead, head to the west. I was just going off into a snooze, heaving occasionally, the singing of a ball over on one side my house, when, whizzzz! Crack! Bang! And some wall splinters flew over into my face. I got up rather suddenly I fancy and supposing the ball had come through the side of my house. I began looking to see how it got through but could find no trace of its entrance. However I soon found the ball on the side of my little _____ stoves. By the appearance of it, it must have pressed between two of the poles, struck a bar in the iron bedstead and glanced off to my right to the stove, about two fee from me. So my ____ bedstead has done me a good turn already.Well tonight I get an order from Gen. Corcoran to “instructions men to be ready tonight a moment’s notice, in case of any emergency.” So into the fort they go, each detachment sleeping by its piece. I understand our troops that went out this morning are driving the enemy steadily before them. We found them defended by earthworks which they had _____ up but, it is reported, a portion of these were stormed. This order of Genl. Corcoran also looks as if something had been done that would culminate in a serious affair. So far, so good. We are already that’s one consolation——to you undoubtedly as to me.Do you teach this summer? If so, do you hold forth at Lima? As I remember you were going to teach in Springwater I believe. When do you commence if such is the case? Give me your correct address, when you change it.Now I’m going to tell you another thing, promising that it is strictly confidential. I have a chance or two of getting transferred into a Battery of Light Artillery, the officers to be Commissioned by the President and the other chance of being senior 1st Lt in a battery to be raised the coming summer. Both of these are merely chances—or opportunities. I’m going to put the matter to rest before long as Donna s I can. Oh I love the artillery service, so much more than the Infantry and I believe I’m better adapted to it. Now my chances, I refer to, may all go for naught and I remain as I am, merely commanding a fixed battery. So you ____not expect any change in m commission. Just keep it in mind and if I accomplish it then I tell you and you congratulate me and so forth and so on.Remember this is a love letter too. Answer s____ and lovely and send your picture. A javeais,Waldo 4thThe siege is raised. The Rebs have ____. They have been withdrawing all night. Our troops _____ are in pursuit. Do you feel better?

Price: 350 USD

Location: Midland, Michigan

End Time: 2024-12-08T16:46:51.000Z

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