Читать книгу A Minor War History Compiled from a Soldier Boy's Letters to "the Girl I Left Behind Me": 1861-1864 онлайн

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Camp Union,

Bladensburg, Md., Sept. 22, 1861.

LAST Wednesday I went down to the Third Regiment and saw lots and lots of the old crowd. Roger Woodbury had not come on yet from Long Island. I met Frank Morrill, Jack Holmes, Ruthven Houghton, and many others. Frank and I had such a good long talk over the happy old times. The regiment is camped about three miles from here, and the men are worrying for fear they may be ordered back to Long Island.

So you think, do you, it would be a good plan to go down to the city once in a while for something good to eat. Why, bless you, we don’t have to do that now. We have sutlers here, and hucksters out from the city, and farmers with their truck, and can buy most anything we want to piece out the army rations, from sweet potatoes to pound cake.

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Camp Union,

Bladensburg, Md., Sept. 29, 1861.

COMPANY I goes on guard today, and I can manage to pick out a little time for writing letters. I wish you could be in camp here Sundays and see the colored people come in. Sunday is the negro’s holiday, and they swarm into camp with their apples, peaches, chickens, or whatever they happen to have that can be turned into money or old clothes. Each one has a basket, with a crooked stick on which to swing it over the shoulder. These plantation negroes—mostly slaves—are a quaint lot, not a bit like the bright colored people you see north. We used to think the stage negro at the minstrel show was a burlesque. He wasn’t.