[Letterhead: Headquarters, Military Division of the Mississippi,

Office Provost Marshal General,]

                                                                        [Nashville, Tenn.,] Decr 19^th [1864.]

 

Dear brother.—

 

I thank you for the very friendly although too brief letter of the 7^th inst;—the brevity of your letter is very excuseable in view of the busy time occasioned by taking an account of Stock. I hope the result has been every way satisfactory to you. Buy light for a time longer,—goods of all description are bound to come down & great will be the fall thereof, when the time comes for it. I trust your indebtedness on merchdze acct is small & you are fully prepared for the coming change.—Of the glorious victory vouchsafed us here you are fully advised. It is a glorious victory in every sense of the word & Hood is not across the Tennessee River yet, the heavy rains of the past four days wont help him either in getting across.—The prospect is that he will get away with a mere few hundred men, if he gets away at all.—I was immediately behind our attacking parties on Thursday & Friday and had narrow escapes from feeling the effect of Bullets & Shells. There was no necessity of my being there, for, I only went to see the fight & having escaped being wounded, if not “laid out”, is the overruling of a kind Providence.—I would not be again in the same/hot spot I was on Friday, for anything, nor would I now have missed the sight for five hundred Dollars. It was magnificient & never to be forgotten.—I have only learned of one man, a Corporal in Co B.,—belonging to the 74^th as being wounded and none killed.—Newton Hicks has not got here yet. I doubt whether he can get here now unless he sends for a Pass. Coming to Nashville is being put a stop to for the present. Horsman will undoubtedly be here this week; I shall then hear from you.—If I go to Washington and can any way arrange it, I’ll make a flying visit to see you, Stockdale is here yet, awaiting his Papers—My family is back at my father in law’s,—they are all well.—(My best wishes for a merry Christmas to you and yours. I hope you will have a good holyday trade and make lots of money,—a luxury that I am sighing for and vainly at that.—Should any change occur with me I will write before New Year or I may drop in on you instead of writing.—

 

Love to Lona.—

Affectionately

                        Your brother

                                                Edward

 

I am in no mood for writing, else I could write a more interresting and a longer letter.—I mailed a couple of Papers to you to day.

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