Raynors HCA 2017-02
This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 2/23/2017
A good war-date Union soldier's letter, 8pp. 8vo., written by Pvt. Henry H. Fulton, Co. E, 20th Ohio Vols. [shot by Rebel guerrillas near Pine Level, N. C.,4/10/65; DOW Raleigh, 4/12/65], Lake Providence, La., Mar. 12, 1863, in part: "…I have seen war in all its phases except a battle and am satisfied with it. If you can escape the conscription act do so at all hazards. You had better pay the three hundred dollars than get into the army. You can not stand it a month. We have to march…hot days till we are so tired we can hardly move and our clothes are wet with sweat and lay down on the wet ground till we get cold…at night we have to stand picket with out any shelter or fire…people at home have a very different idea of war from what it really is. I do not write this because I am tired of war…but I have got hardened to its hardships and can stand them better than a man just coming into the field. Last January there were three hundred drafted men sent to this Regt. and they have have been dying ever since and they are all sick every morning. The surgeons tent is filled up with drafted men…there were five companies of our regt. out on a scout last Saturday…two niggers came into camp and sold. There were about 400 secesh at a town called Floyd…we started with two days rations and the nigers for pilots. We marched until the middle of the afternoon when we came to where the secesh had burned a bridge across a bayou and we could not get across. We…saw some horsemen coming toward us. We thought they were guerrillas and were drawn up in line of battle but when they come up they were our own men, some artillery that had been out scouting for horses. We found here that we could not get to Floyd so we went to a plantation and went to catching mules and chickens. We got 30 mules and 300 chickens and camped here for the night…while on our scout I saw clover ankle high…we saw some splendid plantations nearly all deserted. The people leaving all behind…they will [not] find much when they come back. We got all the reading matter we could carry back to camp…the night we were out we slept in a fine house…we lived well that night on chickens, honey, sweet potatoes…Tom Leggett found a cart and we hitched a mule to it and put a tub of honey in it and filled it up with chickens and started for camp. We have a chicken coop to every tent…we have a rooster fight every morning. When the boys get out they scout the country to find a fighting rooster. Jim McNerland has one that wears the belt…three of the men that come with us last fall are dead. One died in Miss at Abbyville, one at Memphis and the other drowned himself in the lake…he was a little fellow. His name was esquire Davis…he was a married man and got a very gloomy letter from his wife yesterday…tell Ma that I do not know why Robert Larimore wrote I was not hurt. He did not know I was in the hospital till after I had come back to the Regt…Henry Fulton." The original stamped transmittal cover is included. VG
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