Newport .. News .. Feb..22..1863

 

                        Most respected brother i received a letter from you last eavening and was glad to hear from you and more so that you ware all well I am fealing verry well for a man of my age and been whare i have for the last six months i have laid on the ground most of that time and have don my duty and not mist a turn i have some cold now i caught it soon after we came here we arived here the eleventh of february i said the eleventh i am mistaken it was the ninth the eleventh was my birth day perhaps you may have forgot my age so i will jest mark it here..41.years an old man to old to be here in this scrape the meanest thing that ever happened to this government and the warst caried on and the worst constructed you at home can read the smoothe side of a paper and it tells you a fine story but when you come we come out here and have the reality i will tell you if you can believe me that you know little of the real prosedings by what you read in the papers though I knew considerable by reading the papers but i know more now for i have been in it and i will give a hundred dollers to get out of it when i come out here i come as supposed for the good of the government i did not come for money for i was making one doller sixty seven cents a day and had work enough till snow flew so i was not obliged to enlist i want satisfide to stay at home i wanted to come from the time the war broke out because i thought it would be of benefit to the government but i have made up my mind  that it will be an imgary in a long run it has been two years since the war broke out and we hant made any head way yet that i can se it was thought by the old as well as the new troops wen we came out that the thing would be closed up by the first of june but it ant any nearer now than it was then so that it makes then disheartened and they wont fite this ninth corps is done a goodeal of fiting the most of them and they have got sick of it and they wont fight as they would if they could se any chance of doing any good but thare is no sight for us thare is more than one half of them that will give themselves up the first chance they and get perrold they think that the best way to get out of it and so do i you can form some side of my mind about this war this has been a hard day it bgan to snow last night about nine oclock and the wind blew hard i thaught of new Hampshier and we lay close on the beech at the mouthe of the James river and the it snowed all night this morning it began to rain and it did rain all the forenoon and the wind blew to our house is poor and leeks some how long we shall stay here rite soon i must close for want of paper good by for this time yours truly from..Samuel..W..Corliss

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