A Second Letter from Jackson, Tennessee
Title
A Second Letter from Jackson, Tennessee
Subject
William alludes to a letter he wrote Jane in which he asked for her advice on possible desertion, which he fears may have been intercepted by military censors, and asks her to share news about deserters in their hometown.
Creator
William Standard
Source
William M. Standard Papers
Publisher
Atlanta History Center
Date
February 8, 1863
Format
PDF
Language
English
Type
Digitized Manuscript
Identifier
February 8, 1863 letter from Jackson Tennessee
Coverage
American Civil War 1861-1865
Text
Camp Jackson Tennessee February 8th 1863
Affectionate wife and children,
I seat myself down to the desk to write you another letter to let you know that I am still well as usual. I have got over my toothache minus a tooth, and I hope that this letter may find you enjoying the best of health, and doing well too. We are still in Camp Reed near Jackson Tenn. but do not know how long we will stay here. I am tired of this place and hope we will be ordered away soon. There is nothing here that will interest anyone to enliven or keep one’s spirits up. Everything drags along as if the world had stopped moving and stood still. Nothing arouses us but the tap of the drum. We are drummed out of the bed in the morning then drummed to breakfast then to dinner, then drummed to battalion drill, then drummed to dress parade, then drummed [to] supper, then to bed again. In fact we despise the sound of a drum. It has become disgusting to hear the sound of a drum.
Again [I] am most hastily tired of looking around me and seeing no one but soldiers dressed in Lincoln’s clothes & Lincoln caps, go where you will. Go when you will there [are] none but the Lincoln hireling. Some talk polite, some pray, but most are as wicked as the bad one [Satan, who] would be willing to receive them, and I do believe the present administration at Washington is doing more [to] make men wicked than all classes of infidels put together. For they might [do not] take some steps to have this monstrous war brought to a close.
I think they must stop soon for want of money. The greenbacks now are only worth forty cents on the dollar in gold, and I guess that it won’t be long before the people won’t take them at all and then the war must close. If the common soldier take the greenbacks as what they are worth in gold he then only get about six dollars a month for his labor and if the government don’t do something more to make good the pay of the soldier their families must Suffer and that they will not bear. There is great dissatisfaction at this time about pay. We are all strap[ped] and one cannot say to another [“]you’re stra[p]ped[”] without being insulted in the same way.
It is very muddy here today. The snow is melted off that fall last week and that makes mud. We had some cold weather last week that made me think of old Fulton in Illinois.
This is Sunday night and I am all alone in my tent writing this letter to my kind wife and beautiful children and I know that they are thinking about me away down here in an enemy’s land, subject to all the hardships that the soldier is exposed to. Don’t fret on my account. I will do the best I can to take care of my health, and if there should be some gray hairs among my whiskers you need not envy them. They will be honorable hairs to me, and I want to wear them home to show you how I keep my face dressed down here in Tennessee. I would be glad to be at home tonight & talk to you all night and tell you how we get along and what we do and what we see and it would take a man a lifetime to tell all that he hears in the army, about fighting, about peace, about everything that you could think of good and bad.
I wrote to you about trying to get to come home, and wanted you to advise me what you thought best to do. It may be that they stopped the letter as they have stopped the circulation of the democratic paper among the army. But I will tell you the truth and that is that I am going to get out of this scrape if possible, but prefer honorable to dishonorable means. If I can get out honorable then I could come home with a good face on but if a man should be forced to run off from the army then he would have to go where he was not known, to avoid the law. I can’t stay three years.
If we get our pay you may look out for some greenbacks.
Soon I suppose the colonel will be well enough to send someone home so that the men may send money to their families. But who I do not know.
Mr. Rice that lives east of Lewistown is down here after his boy that is very sick. He has been in the general Hospital and is very low at this time. Rice moved him to a private house, to [a] Mr. Taylor’s. They are secesh, and clever people. Rice is going to start home in the morning and I want to send this by him. I shall have to go downtown in the morning to see him before he leaves. You must write often to me, and especially if any of you get sick.
Tell me what you hear about the soldier[s] that are deserting, if they are sending them back to the army, if there is any talk of war at home, for we hear all kinds of stories down here and I would like to know how it is.
Well has the children wrote me that letter yet? I would be glad to see it with their names all to it. Goodbye hoping to get a letter soon. I am your Husband and father. Wm Standard to his wife and children.
Feb 9th ’63. I am still well today. Went to bed at 11 o’clock. Slept until this morning. Sergeant Cole’s wife wrote to him saying there is no letters coming to Lewistown from the 103rd Regiment. How is it? Do you hear of such reports? She says that the people there don’t know where we are, nor what we are doing. They seem to think we are all prisoners or gone up the spirit in some way. But you see we are safe and sound in Camp Reed, at Jackson Tenn, your old native State. It would have been a beautiful thing to have visited this country before the breaking out of this war. There is some of the most splendid residences that art or ingenuity can devise, but many of them are entirely ruined by the effects of this war, and it is enough to make anyone look with disgust on any man or set of men that are willing to carry on a war for the purpose of laying waste to a country as finely people as this, causing brother to war against brother, shedding each other blood, and taking each other lives. A man that is opposed to a compromise of this war ought to be held up to society as a villain of the deepest dye. But I hope for the better. I think that the majority of the army are determined to have this matter settled by the first day of April at the furthest. The great cry now seems to be the taking of Vicksburg. If we are successful there then there is some hope. But I don’t believe that we can take the place. I expect that the 103rd will be ordered there. I hope not, for that is a hard place. If we should, don’t be uneasy. I will take care of myself to the best of advantages that I can get; there is always two ends to a string.
We have dismissed all of the niggers in our company long ago and Reeves is doing our cooking for us (that is for the captain, Willison, myself and Reeves compose our mess). We pay him seven dollars a month to cook for us. I pay one dollar of that only. Reeves and I draw our rations and the captain and Willison have to buy theirs. We all eat together. We have full rations at this time but it is old bread and meat such as it is. We get no vegetables of any kind just bread and meat and meat and bread washed down with coffee three times a day. Plenty of sugar, no cream. Butter is worth fifty cents per pound down here, coffee sixty cents. Salt none to be had only as the army is supplied with it. The citizens have to pay a high price. I don’t know how much. Calico and all kinds of clothing are very high and factory none to be had at any price. Boots from ten to forty dollars a pair. So you see it costs something to live down here. Private boarding five dollars a week. Board at hotels ten dollars a week. Single meals fifty cents.
Dear Jane the mail has just come and with it comes you[r] kind letter that you commenced on the 1st day of February 1863 and I read it with the greatest of Pleasure. I was glad that your pap was good enough to come and see you and that your mother brought you some butter. I know you needed it. It seem strange that letters go so unregularly from here home, or from home here.
You think that if you were here that you would manage to be taken prisoner and then be paroled and come home but suppose there was no chance to be taken prisoner; then you could not be paroled or be so [ex]changed. If we ever got into a tight place I will skedaddle in the right way to be getting home. I would hate to be taken prisoner in a battle for fear [it] must be too long before they would prisoner exchange me. The best way seems to be to get into the country and fall in to the hands of the guerrilla parties and they will parole a person out. The trouble is they rob a man of all he had and then let him go but I think if I ever undertake it I will make it pay. The great trouble is to get through our own picket lines without being taken by them and brought back inside our own lines. But if I ever get outside of the lines they will never be able nor sharp enough to catch me if I should die in the attempt. I know that it is hard for you to do so much of our business. That makes me cry but it won’t hurt me to shed tears of affection for being absent from such a kind family. I will send you the last dollar that I get from the government for my pay to help you along till I get home to help you provide a living for my family.
I think there is some mistake about the taxes. It must be that 14 dollars and 80 cents is all that is due on the house and lot and personal property included.
Get Mr Worley to see if there is not some mistake about the taxes. I wrote to you about the note you gave Johnson. You better get it back from him. I will see [Samuel] Tipton and find out if a mortgage given here will be of any use up there but I think it will not. I will make out a bill of sale for him and sign it and he can let you keep possession of it if he wants to. I will tend to it right away. I will make every effort in my power to get home. I am truly sorry that I was so fool hearty as not to take your kind advice and stay at home and run my chances of the draft. I see that the abolition [C]ongress is going to pass a conscript law and they will not have an able bodied man at home in the North. Their policy seems to be to take all the white men and kill them off for the sake of freeing a few niggers. I don’t feel much like fighting to free niggers at the expense of my life. There is now confined in hospitals of General Grant army about six Thousand men that are sick and wounded. Don’t that astound you? But such are the effects of War. I would as soon be dead as to be confined in one of these Hospitals. They don’t give a man as much attention as you would pen, our little dog and when he dies a nigger buries him.
Affectionate wife and children,
I seat myself down to the desk to write you another letter to let you know that I am still well as usual. I have got over my toothache minus a tooth, and I hope that this letter may find you enjoying the best of health, and doing well too. We are still in Camp Reed near Jackson Tenn. but do not know how long we will stay here. I am tired of this place and hope we will be ordered away soon. There is nothing here that will interest anyone to enliven or keep one’s spirits up. Everything drags along as if the world had stopped moving and stood still. Nothing arouses us but the tap of the drum. We are drummed out of the bed in the morning then drummed to breakfast then to dinner, then drummed to battalion drill, then drummed to dress parade, then drummed [to] supper, then to bed again. In fact we despise the sound of a drum. It has become disgusting to hear the sound of a drum.
Again [I] am most hastily tired of looking around me and seeing no one but soldiers dressed in Lincoln’s clothes & Lincoln caps, go where you will. Go when you will there [are] none but the Lincoln hireling. Some talk polite, some pray, but most are as wicked as the bad one [Satan, who] would be willing to receive them, and I do believe the present administration at Washington is doing more [to] make men wicked than all classes of infidels put together. For they might [do not] take some steps to have this monstrous war brought to a close.
I think they must stop soon for want of money. The greenbacks now are only worth forty cents on the dollar in gold, and I guess that it won’t be long before the people won’t take them at all and then the war must close. If the common soldier take the greenbacks as what they are worth in gold he then only get about six dollars a month for his labor and if the government don’t do something more to make good the pay of the soldier their families must Suffer and that they will not bear. There is great dissatisfaction at this time about pay. We are all strap[ped] and one cannot say to another [“]you’re stra[p]ped[”] without being insulted in the same way.
It is very muddy here today. The snow is melted off that fall last week and that makes mud. We had some cold weather last week that made me think of old Fulton in Illinois.
This is Sunday night and I am all alone in my tent writing this letter to my kind wife and beautiful children and I know that they are thinking about me away down here in an enemy’s land, subject to all the hardships that the soldier is exposed to. Don’t fret on my account. I will do the best I can to take care of my health, and if there should be some gray hairs among my whiskers you need not envy them. They will be honorable hairs to me, and I want to wear them home to show you how I keep my face dressed down here in Tennessee. I would be glad to be at home tonight & talk to you all night and tell you how we get along and what we do and what we see and it would take a man a lifetime to tell all that he hears in the army, about fighting, about peace, about everything that you could think of good and bad.
I wrote to you about trying to get to come home, and wanted you to advise me what you thought best to do. It may be that they stopped the letter as they have stopped the circulation of the democratic paper among the army. But I will tell you the truth and that is that I am going to get out of this scrape if possible, but prefer honorable to dishonorable means. If I can get out honorable then I could come home with a good face on but if a man should be forced to run off from the army then he would have to go where he was not known, to avoid the law. I can’t stay three years.
If we get our pay you may look out for some greenbacks.
Soon I suppose the colonel will be well enough to send someone home so that the men may send money to their families. But who I do not know.
Mr. Rice that lives east of Lewistown is down here after his boy that is very sick. He has been in the general Hospital and is very low at this time. Rice moved him to a private house, to [a] Mr. Taylor’s. They are secesh, and clever people. Rice is going to start home in the morning and I want to send this by him. I shall have to go downtown in the morning to see him before he leaves. You must write often to me, and especially if any of you get sick.
Tell me what you hear about the soldier[s] that are deserting, if they are sending them back to the army, if there is any talk of war at home, for we hear all kinds of stories down here and I would like to know how it is.
Well has the children wrote me that letter yet? I would be glad to see it with their names all to it. Goodbye hoping to get a letter soon. I am your Husband and father. Wm Standard to his wife and children.
Feb 9th ’63. I am still well today. Went to bed at 11 o’clock. Slept until this morning. Sergeant Cole’s wife wrote to him saying there is no letters coming to Lewistown from the 103rd Regiment. How is it? Do you hear of such reports? She says that the people there don’t know where we are, nor what we are doing. They seem to think we are all prisoners or gone up the spirit in some way. But you see we are safe and sound in Camp Reed, at Jackson Tenn, your old native State. It would have been a beautiful thing to have visited this country before the breaking out of this war. There is some of the most splendid residences that art or ingenuity can devise, but many of them are entirely ruined by the effects of this war, and it is enough to make anyone look with disgust on any man or set of men that are willing to carry on a war for the purpose of laying waste to a country as finely people as this, causing brother to war against brother, shedding each other blood, and taking each other lives. A man that is opposed to a compromise of this war ought to be held up to society as a villain of the deepest dye. But I hope for the better. I think that the majority of the army are determined to have this matter settled by the first day of April at the furthest. The great cry now seems to be the taking of Vicksburg. If we are successful there then there is some hope. But I don’t believe that we can take the place. I expect that the 103rd will be ordered there. I hope not, for that is a hard place. If we should, don’t be uneasy. I will take care of myself to the best of advantages that I can get; there is always two ends to a string.
We have dismissed all of the niggers in our company long ago and Reeves is doing our cooking for us (that is for the captain, Willison, myself and Reeves compose our mess). We pay him seven dollars a month to cook for us. I pay one dollar of that only. Reeves and I draw our rations and the captain and Willison have to buy theirs. We all eat together. We have full rations at this time but it is old bread and meat such as it is. We get no vegetables of any kind just bread and meat and meat and bread washed down with coffee three times a day. Plenty of sugar, no cream. Butter is worth fifty cents per pound down here, coffee sixty cents. Salt none to be had only as the army is supplied with it. The citizens have to pay a high price. I don’t know how much. Calico and all kinds of clothing are very high and factory none to be had at any price. Boots from ten to forty dollars a pair. So you see it costs something to live down here. Private boarding five dollars a week. Board at hotels ten dollars a week. Single meals fifty cents.
Dear Jane the mail has just come and with it comes you[r] kind letter that you commenced on the 1st day of February 1863 and I read it with the greatest of Pleasure. I was glad that your pap was good enough to come and see you and that your mother brought you some butter. I know you needed it. It seem strange that letters go so unregularly from here home, or from home here.
You think that if you were here that you would manage to be taken prisoner and then be paroled and come home but suppose there was no chance to be taken prisoner; then you could not be paroled or be so [ex]changed. If we ever got into a tight place I will skedaddle in the right way to be getting home. I would hate to be taken prisoner in a battle for fear [it] must be too long before they would prisoner exchange me. The best way seems to be to get into the country and fall in to the hands of the guerrilla parties and they will parole a person out. The trouble is they rob a man of all he had and then let him go but I think if I ever undertake it I will make it pay. The great trouble is to get through our own picket lines without being taken by them and brought back inside our own lines. But if I ever get outside of the lines they will never be able nor sharp enough to catch me if I should die in the attempt. I know that it is hard for you to do so much of our business. That makes me cry but it won’t hurt me to shed tears of affection for being absent from such a kind family. I will send you the last dollar that I get from the government for my pay to help you along till I get home to help you provide a living for my family.
I think there is some mistake about the taxes. It must be that 14 dollars and 80 cents is all that is due on the house and lot and personal property included.
Get Mr Worley to see if there is not some mistake about the taxes. I wrote to you about the note you gave Johnson. You better get it back from him. I will see [Samuel] Tipton and find out if a mortgage given here will be of any use up there but I think it will not. I will make out a bill of sale for him and sign it and he can let you keep possession of it if he wants to. I will tend to it right away. I will make every effort in my power to get home. I am truly sorry that I was so fool hearty as not to take your kind advice and stay at home and run my chances of the draft. I see that the abolition [C]ongress is going to pass a conscript law and they will not have an able bodied man at home in the North. Their policy seems to be to take all the white men and kill them off for the sake of freeing a few niggers. I don’t feel much like fighting to free niggers at the expense of my life. There is now confined in hospitals of General Grant army about six Thousand men that are sick and wounded. Don’t that astound you? But such are the effects of War. I would as soon be dead as to be confined in one of these Hospitals. They don’t give a man as much attention as you would pen, our little dog and when he dies a nigger buries him.
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William Standard, “A Second Letter from Jackson, Tennessee,” A Yankee Soldier's Struggle With The Union Cause , accessed May 18, 2024, https://timroberts.org/civwarletters/items/show/6.