Camp.Near..Fredericksburg..Feb.5,1863

Most respected sister i received your letter last evening and was glad to hear from you as much so as tho i had answered yours before i have a good many to answer latly and my duty to do and my wood to fetch a mild all we burn it some wood here tho it is in the suny south it has been as cold for the last week as it generaly is in the north i rote you in my last of the snow storn we had last week this is the fifth of February it snows ha rd to day and as cold a storm as you hardly ever se in the north it is one of the old northeasters yesterday and night before last was about as hard to bar as you generaly se north i think we have had as much snow here as you have had thar according to the account i have had of it if thare is any thing that will make a soldier think of home it is such a day as this with our wood to lug a mile on our backs and the places we have to stay in i have been out this morning hept to dig up the body of one of our company to send to home to Manchester and it was about as hard to bar i most ever se in new hampshier Joseph Buroso tents with me he has gone to the lot for wood i have the disentary for three or four days so that i hant don much but i must go to the woods or freese and that ont do here in verginna for i am bound to live as long as i can i did come out thinking to leave my body here i think i shall live to go home and live with my family and enjoy life in my old age but the lord will be don if he seas fit i shall probly spend my days here and when life is gone they will put me in a soldiers grave and thare i shall lye and my bons will rot in a sothern soil i don’t let it trobel my mind i shall take it as it comes i made up my mind to that when i started mfate is seald let it as it will but my mind is home and i think i shall find it in Amherst i shall do my duty as long as I can I think that I shall stand it if they dont put me on to another long march if they do I shall throw away all that posably can I dont think we shall leave here for two months if we do then I hear a grate many camp storys but any one cant believe only what they see i just heard that we ware to leave for south Carolina but i cant se it in that light as the oficers are going home on furlows and some of the soldiers things dont look much like leaving at present still it may be so for aught i know i find that the soldier cant tell when nor whare he is going i tell you the man that has been here this winter and is luck enough to get his discharge wont be very likely to inlist agone at present i think i should not for a while at least this thing is plang out the soldiers are geting disheartened in the way they have to live this winter what wehave to eat is not the thing it our camps and what we have to sleep on and under it would mak you shuder to come here and se how we live if thare is any thing that will bring the feelings of a person  he would to come here today and look this camp over some here sick lying on the ground thos wont be but a few left in three months more thare has been about thirty died out of this Regement and the are in the hospittle so that we hant more than four hundred out of nine hundred and sixty when we started so you may gudge for yourself for the next three months i have rote about all the news i think of at present you must go and se the family as often as you can rite as often as you can if i don’t answer them but will try and answr them as often as i can this from your brother that is far away

 

S. W. Corlis

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