Prospect Station, Tenn. Dec. 17, 1863.

 

Dear Sister:

                        Your letter of Dec. 9^th was received yesterday, and one from mother was received two or three days before. The package of paper also arrived safely, for which I was very thankful.

 

            To-day our Company has been engaged in making "gabions" for a fort. The definition of this scientific term is, "cylyndrical baskets, made of light saplings and open at both ends", filled with dirt, so as to resist cannon balls. They are placed around the port holes, and sides of the fort so as to keep the dirt from sliding down. They are about 3 feet in height, and two feet in diameter. We have made 40 of them to-day. There are 200 to be made, and we are to be excused from other duty until they are made. 

 

The fort is being built in a beautiful situation, on the top of a high hill, which commands all the country around it. By the way, in this connection, I want to ask a question. A little pronouncing dictionary that we have here spells the word which means a light, pliable sapling withe. My impression is that wythe is the proper way. Please consult Webster's Unabridged, and inform me of the result.

 

            Last Sabbath our Company was ordered out on a foraging trip. The rain came down in torrents. It was one of those needless desecrations of the Sabbath and exposures of men which are so common in the army. Our trip was a bootless one. Not a thing was brought in except some molasses which we foraged on private account. We waded creeks and plunged through mud in anything but an amiable humor. / I have said that our trip was a bootless one. In one sense it was not, for only the day before we had drawn about 20 pair of new boots, and we found them to be of no small service. We went over the State line into Alabama. I went into a house and talked a while with the inhabitants. There was one young woman who talked quite intelligently, and was passably good looking; but even if I were generally disposed to fall in love at first sight, there was one thing that obviated all danger in this case. It was nothing but seeing her eject occasional mouthfuls of tobacco juice. Two or three of the women had never seen the American flag. They belonged to the class known as "poor whites". Said I to them a laboring man is as much respected in the North as a rich man. They replied that it was not so here, that a laboring man was looked / upon with contempt. But, said they, things are altered now. Poor folks are beginning to look up. It is the rich who are the helpless ones now. Their slaves are gone, and they will be compelled to work. It will be a hard task for many of them who have never learned to do anything. They instanced one old lady of 70 years, the owner of the plantation on which they were living, who had never cooked a meal of victuals in her life. From their plantation 40 able bodied negroes went only last week. A negro regiment is being raised at Pulaski.

 

            There are camp rumors of our moving farther down the road to Athens Alabama, but I place very little reliance in them.

 

            I was a good deal surprised to hear of Alice's departure for Granville. I hope that she may have a pleasant time of it.

 

            I wrote to Hiram a few days since. It is growing late, and I must close.

                                               

Your Brother,

SOURCES