This letter was written by 23 year-old bootmaker, Joshua H. Tower of Hopkinton Massachusetts. Joshua enlisted on 4 August 1862 as a private in Co. F, 1st Massachusetts Heavy Artillery. This regiment began its service as the 14th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry and garrisoned Fort DeKalb (later renamed Fort Strong) on Arlington Heights from August 1862 to June 1863.

Co. F remained on duty at forts in the  Washington D. C. area until May 15-16 1864, when the regiment was ordered to Belle Plain,  Virginia. From there they fought as infantrymen at Spotsylvania Court House, North Anna, Totopotomoy, Cold Harbor and Before Petersburg and Siege of Petersburg, beginning on Jun 16 1864, where Tower was taken prisoner.

Tower did not survive the war. He died of disease as a prisoner of war on 10 October 1864 at Savannah, Georgia. He had been taken prisoner on 22 June 1864  at Petersburg.

Joshua’s wife, Philena M. (Knowlton) Tower (1835-1908), filed for a pension (Certificate 62,413) but it was annotated that her surname was “now Nichols”—she having married Roswell Nichols sometime prior to 1870. Her parents were Marshall Knowlton and Mary Holmes.

Transcription

Fort DeKalb ¹
December 13, 1862,

To my sister Kate,

I received a letter from you and was very glad to learn that you were all getting along so well in point of health. I too am in good health and weigh one hundred and sixty pounds which is about my usual weight when at home. I got a letter from wife last night and she writes me that she had a sore throat, but it is getting better of it now and is going to Tom’s as soon as she can. I expect that you are having a taste of winter at home but it is warm and pleasant here now. We had it cold enough the fore part of the week. The Potomac is frozen over above the aqueduct bridge, which don’t happen every winter. It snowed here a week ago last Friday, but it is all gone now. I think the weather is a great deal warmer here than at home, but it is as hard to bear as winter in Massachusetts. The changes are as great which makes it seem colder than it really is.

Monday the 15th. It is warm and pleasant as summer today, and we  sit in our tents with the doors open. Quite different from the weather a week ago last Saturday. At the convalescent camp near Alexandria, six soldiers froze to death. They have got no fire nor means of getting any. Sam Bicknell ² was there and came up to our fort and stayed a week. Said he  should have died if he had stayed much longer. He went back yesterday. People may talk about the sufferings of the soldiers of the Revolution and one of these days they will tell about the soldiers of 1862.

“The Union forces under Gen. Burnside have got possession of Fredericksburg and are driving the rebels out of their fortifications but it will cost seas of blood to do it…”

— Joshua H. Tower, 1st Mass. Heavy Artillery, 15 December 1862

There is a battle being fought at Fredericksburg about sixty miles from here and about half way between here and Richmond. The papers say it will be the bloodiest battle of the century. Already there are five thousand sick and wounded in the hospitals from that fight. The Union forces under Gen. Burnside have got possession of Fredericksburg and are driving the rebels out of their fortifications but it will cost seas of blood to do it and then they will retreat into other fortifications to be still driven, unless some fortunate circumstance shall give us Richmond while Burnside is engaging the rebels at Fredericksburg.

17th. Since writing the above, news has arrived that Gen. Burnside has retreated across the Chickahominy [Rappahannock] and abandoned the fight after losing ten thousand men killed, wounded and missing. Burnside, in his dispatch to the general government, says he felt that the enemy’s works could not be carried and that a repulse would be disastrous to  his army. Finally, I can’t tell anything about it when the war will end or which will come off victorious, but hope we shall come [out] top of the heap.

Give my love to all and write often and not wait for me to write every time you do. This from your affectionate brother  , — J.

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¹ Fort DeKalb was constructed at the northern end of Arlington Heights for the purpose of guarding the roads and approaches to the canal aquaduct bridge (near present-day Key Bridge). The fort was three-quarters of a mile west of Fort Corcaran. It was a lunette with stockaded gorges. Rifle pits were dug outside the fort. It was later named Fort Strong.

² Samuel Barrett Bicknell was a corporal in Co. B, 16th Massachusetts Infantry. He was a carpenter from Hopkinton, Middlesex, Massachusetts.