In Their Own Words
November 29, 1862
Harshness of Army Life Mentioned in Civil War Letter
A Georgia soldier wrote home to his mother, describing the harshness of army life.
“…We stayed on picket 48 hours down in Fredericksburg. I am not so very well today. My cold seems to get worse. I have got a very bad cough and I am so bad stopped up till I sometimes almost smother. I am fearful that I will be sick. We have a very fair prospect for a snow now soon. I dread it very bad without we was better prepared for it. I don’t know what we will do if we don’t get shoes. …”
Source: Elizabeth Whitley Roberson, In Care of Yellow River: The Complete Civil War Letters of Pvt. Eli Pinson Landers to His Mother (Gretna: Pelican Publishing Company, 1997), pp. 104-105.
