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

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

Chapter 14: XI
By Martin A. Haynes
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About This Book

A series of wartime letters written between 1861 and 1864 to a loved one presents an intimate account of camp routine, marches, garrison duty, and occasional skirmishes, emphasizing comradeship, small talk, humor, and the routine hardships of soldiers. The editor removed strictly personal matters and arranged the correspondence into sketches that preserve individual personalities and camp anecdotes, recording everyday details—meals, guard duty, uniforms, morale—rather than grand strategy, and offering a ground-level portrait of military life and memory.

XI

Headquarters Second Regt. N. H. Vols.,
Portsmouth, June 19, 1861.

OFF we go at 7 o’clock tomorrow morning, and everything is bustle and excitement. Have seen lots of Manchester folks here within a day or two. Mary Rice was on the parade ground yesterday. Dr. Nelson, Henry A. Gage, A. C. Wallace, policeman Bennett, Parker Hunt and his mother, and many more of my friends and acquaintances. We have been drilling today with knapsacks and equipments on, and my shoulders are as lame as if I had been beaten with a club. Twenty rounds of cartridges have been issued to us. You will direct letters to Company I, 2d Regt. N. H. Vols., Washington, D. C. We may not be at Washington, but there is no mail south of there, and it will be distributed from that point.

There was quite an excitement here last night, resulting from a fire on the frigate “Santee.” It was set near the magazine, in which was forty tons of powder.