The following letters were written by Melville P. Nickerson (1838-1907), the son of Solomon Swett Nickerson (1802-1856) and Sally Wentworth Veazie (1803-18xx) of Brewer, Penobscot county, Maine. He wrote the letters to his brother-in-law James S. Young of Brewer. In the 1860 US Census, Melville was enumerated in his mother’s home, his 26 year-old brother Oliver working as a boat builder, and Melville as a 22 year-old mariner.
I have not provided a middle name for Melville as the genealogical records vary—some say it was Parker, some say Porter. In fact, his first name is also given variously as Melville or Melvin though I feel confident it was Melville. His comrade’s called him Mell.
The war had barely begun when Melville enlisted on 28 May 1861 as a private in Co. C, 2nd Maine Infantry. He was quickly elevated to a corporal and later rose to Sergeant. Despite Melville ridiculing others in his regiment for “playing off” and being discharged for medical disability by a surgeon’s certificate, it appears that he did the same thing in the spring of 1862, never even participating on McClellan’s Peninsula Campaign. By the time of the 1863 Draft Registration in the summer of 1863, Melville was back in Brewer studying law.
The 2nd Maine was the first Civil War regiment to march out of the state, and was greeted with accolades by civilians as it made its way to Washington, D. C. It engaged in “eleven bloody and hard-fought battles” including the First Battle of Bull Run, where it was the last regiment to leave the field, and Fredericksburg, where it took its greatest number of casualties. As one of the letters alludes to, the term of service to which the men had agreed to serve was a matter of dispute from the very beginning though most did not take the matter seriously in 1861 as most of them thought, like Melville, that the war would certainly be over by the spring of 1862. Whether it was a two year or three term of service seemed to matter little at the time.
Melville’s 1861 letters reflect the reputation of the regiment. They were known as a rough and rowdy bunch who loved a good fight. Many of them were seamen, dock workers, laborers and lumberjacks. Drinking and fighting were second nature to them.
Letter 1
Camp Seward
June 20th 1861
Dear Brother Jim & Sister May
I received your letter last night and was glad to hear from you and the folks at home that I did not stop to think of your not writing before. We are all well here at present and me especially for i never was better in my life although I should like to have something more to eat sometimes but manage to get along very well. We are having very warm but pleasant weather now and some of the men feel the heat very much but I guess that when we get a little more used to it, we shall like it better.
Everything is quiet here at present. No important movements going on although the federal troops are slowly but surely advancing their lines towards Harpers Ferry and Manassas Gap and probably there will be a pitched fight there before long if there is any fight in the South. But every moment it is delayed finds us in better shape for we are improving in drill and there are troops arriving every day more or less. But it is thought that the war will not be prosecuted very much until Congress meets and then after they have another chance to throw down their arms and return to their allegiance. If they still persist in their rebellion, the immense forces concentrated here and at Fort Monroe and the West will probably be sent on and then Jeff Davis & Company had better look out for their necks are in danger.
You can have but a poor idea of the quantity of troops here. Even we, until we had been here a week, saw them come in every day and night, could not imagine anything of the preparations that are being made by the Government. I see by the letters that we get from home that it is generally thought down there that we are in the service for only three months but here we do not know how long we are in for—some say 3 years and others 3 months. As for myself, I cannot find out how it is and therefore shall not express an opinion on it anyway.
We are sorry to hear of the death of poor Benner for he was a first rate little fellow and he is the first of the 2nd Regiment that has fallen a martyr to his patriotism. But his name should be remembered by all true men i nMaine for although he did not [die] by the steel of the rebel’s [bayonet], he has fallen in a glorious cause. May he rest in peace and who will be the next? God only knows.
Mary wrote that Oliver had written the same day that you did but I have not anything from him. I got one last night from David. I should like to have been down there to have gone to the fires. I guess that you have got some secessionists down there. I think you had better organize a regiment right off and station some picket guard and send out patrols or you may see some morning when you get up the rebel flag flying over your heads and then don’t say that I did not warn you. But then, I suppose you don’t know much about war down there. If you had been encamped within two miles of Virginia and within sight of Alexandria and Fairfax Court House and also Arlington Heights for a fortnight, you would feel like fighting. I have been so mad for a week that I did not know what to do.
Because I did not get any letter from home and I have written 4 or 5, but since I got yours & David’s last night, I feel much better. Write as often as you can and tell all the folks to do the same and I shall keep you as well informed of our movements and condition as I can. I have not got only a half of a sheet of paper this morning so I must close. Your brother, — Mell
Letter 2
Camp Seward
June 26th, 1861
Dear Sister,
I received your letter Monday night and was glad to hear that you and the rest of the folks were well and doing well. I am still enjoying good health and in good spirits. There is not much sickness in the camp at present. The warm weather affects a few though it is nothing serious. There is no movements of importance going on now although I believe there is a gradual advance of the forces on the other side of the river in Virginia but probably there will not be much of a battle till after the Fourth of July when, if Congress cannot succeed in arranging the matter, we shall go into them and wipe them out. It is sort of full and dry here in camp but we live well now and don’t have to drill more than one half as much as we did before.
We had a great time here last night. We had a mock dress parade. We dressed up in the worst shape we could after the rag muffin style and went out on the regimental parade and went through the motions of a dress parade, None of the officers partake in it. It is all among the privates. Ed Currier was captain & Jim [ ]son & Charles Merrill were lieutenants while I was orderly sergeant of our company and we had a great time, I tell you. The officers all were out to see it. All of our regiment and all of the other three Maine regiments with quite a crowd from other regiments. There was about five or six thousand soldiers in the field. After we got through with that fun, the band of the #rd Maine came over and played in front of our officers’ quarters for about an hour. They have a very fine band of 23 pieces. We had a splendid serenade. The officers encourage the boys to get up all kind of sports. It serves to make our time pass more pleasantly and keep the boys from being homesick. Charley Merrill got a trunk from home the other night and most of the boys from the lower end of town got some presents from their folks. I got a letter from Mother and Judith and Oliver and have answered them. Hope they will write often and they may expect to hear from me frequently.
As near as I can find out about our term of service, we are accepted for two years but it is not certain and it is impossible to find out for certain here. I suppose that you down there know more about it than we do here.
Monday afternoon I went out on a cruise in the country back of here. I went about three or four miles back on the plantation and had a first rate time on some of them and some of them looked awful ugly, but they do not dare say anything about here about secession to our soldiers for an insult offered to one of them and they would tear a man’s house down over his ears. So we cruise around and eat all of their strawberries and other fruit that we can find on their plantations and thank nobody for it.
We hear some rather hard stories about Wheeler in his performance of his duties toward the support of our soldiers’ families and the boys are awful mad about it. I think that he had better be careful or he will see some trouble when Co. C gets home to Brewer again. They may think he is a rebel and tear his house down about his head or something of that kind for we don’t stop at trifles now and if the people in Brewer want to try any of their humbugging, they had better try somebody else than soldiers (mind that now!).
I got a letter from Enoch Monday night also and shall answer it as soon as I can. Probably this afternoon. You have written several ties about sending newspapers from home but as we get several a week now in camp, I would not bother with them, I think. But do just as you please about it. I was sorry to hear that things were so hard down there as us poor folks must feel the effects of it very much. But I have faith to think that there will be a way provided for all who are striving in this, our sacred cause.
We are expecting the arrival of more Maine regiments every day but what they are going to do with so many men, I can hardly see for there is a chain of encampment a mile deep all around the city and any quantity in the city whilst over the river they have dug entrenchments from Alexandria to Arlington Heights—a distance of about ten miles. And they have any quantity of men in them out west, they are all soldiers. God pity the rebels.
President Lincoln has command of from 225 to 250 thousand men now and we have but just commenced to send troops here yet. New York has about 70 thousand here now and 40 thousand more begging for a chance to come and the other states in proportion. What Jeff Davis thinks of doing with 75,000 men against all this force is more than I can imagine. I should advise him to take what money he can get and hop a fast steamer and take his brother rebel leaders and leave for the south sea islands right off.
But my sheet is fill of something but I guess it don’t amount to much anyway. Write often. From your brother, — M. P. Nickerson
Letter 3
Headquarters 2nd Regiment Vol. Maine Militia
Camp Seward, Washington D. C.
June 27th 1861
Dear Brother Jim and sister,
I have just received your letter of the 23rd and hasten to write in return. I was very glad to hear that you were well and that the rest of the folks were also well. Also that that garden was doing so well. When you eat your first mess of green peas, just eat a few for me. I am happy to say that we are faring much better now than we used to. We get enough and it is of good quality. The fault before was in the contractors. The quartermaster could not get good grub and so he stopped taking of them and engaged a new buyer and provision dealer and now we get along first rate. Ain’t you glad?
I want you to tell Mr. O[liver] M. Nickerson, Esq. that if he can’t stop toting Annie around long enough to write a few letters now and then, that he had better sell out to some loafer that has got time. Tell him that because I have gone and there is nobody to cuff him a little and keep him straight, that he had [better] not think that he can do just as he has a mind to for I shall be at home next spring and then he will have to stand around. Tell Jim that he had better look after him or he may become dangerous. Tell him to give him a dose of cord wood three times a day to be taken for an hour before eating and keep him to home, and I guess that he will get over it in time. I think that there is a chance to outgrow it.
I am tanned up so black that I am almost afraid to go out among the slaveholders around here, and have got a ferocious mustache and whiskers—almost as heavy as the President’s. At least I shall have in a few weeks.
We have to turn out now at 4:30 o’clock for two hours and then have a company drill for an hour and a half at 8:30 o’clock. And then we don’t have anything more to do until half past six at night when we have a dress parade. So you see I have any quantity of time to read and write letters and papers. I was very glad to get a paper from you today. There is o important news here now so I don’t know hardly what to write about.
I think that is all a hoax about Jeff Davis’s propositions for it is contradicted here in Washington last night, but still it may be true for all I can know about such things is by rumor for government does not let its movements be known now. I think there is a chance for the trouble to be settled when Congress meets for I think that the South has got sick of rebellion in the face of such a force as we have raised now. We have about as many men in this city [will] hold and the rooms are all full round about here. Probably we have one hundred to one hundred and fifty thousand men here in this vicinity and about 250 thousand under arms in the North and by September we shall have 500 thousand and they would make short work of the South.
As to how long I have enlisted for, I have enlisted for two years you know in Bangor, and then in Willet’s Point we took an oath for three years if we were mustered in for that length of time, but how long we were mustered in for, I do not know anything more about that than you do. But be it two or three years, this war will be over by next May and then we shall be discharged if not before. We may not have been mustered in for more than three months and so our time will be out the 28th of August.
There is a daguerrean artist here by the name of Mrs. Donaldson—a widow lady who is taking pictures for 25 cents. When I get paid off, I shall send my picture home. I expect it will be splendiferous! Gorgeously magnificent!
Tell mother to write me again and Judith and David and Oliver and everybody else. I have answered Mother’s and Judith’s letter and also your last. Keep on writing and send all the news. Tell Oliver to give my best respects to Ann and tell her that his [Oliver’s] soger brother is a great deal better looking than he is. Give my regards to all enquiring friends. So goodbye for this time and remember your brother.
— M. P. Nickerson, Co. C, 2nd Regt. V. M. M., High Private
Letter 4
Fort Corcoran
August 29th 1861
Brother Jim,
As I have not written to you for some time and it rains today and is sort of dull, I thought I would write a few lines just to let you know that I am alive and well as usual and I hope you and yours are enjoying the same. I kinder thought I should get a letter from you today but did not. But I suppose that you are so busy that you don’t feel much like writing for I know that I don’t like to sit down and write when I have been to work hard.
There is no news of importance here—at least I don’t know any for I don’t have much chance to in here for we have moved inside of the fort and taken up winter quarters, I suppose. And we are busy just now learning how to handle the big guns in here. Our company has 8-inch [seacoast] Howitzers to handle. They differ from the common 64-pound siege guns only in its length and the thickness of the casting as they are made to heave shell and grape in and are not so good for heaving ball. I am gunner of one of the pieces and she is a beauty, I tell you. She weighs 5,780 pounds and I am going to fetch her home with me for a fowling piece when I come and I want to borrow some of your tools to make a stock for her for the one she has got now is rather clumsy.
I shall not want to borrow any gage for you know that I made one last winter and if you have not stolen it, I suppose it is to home now. I should like to play Euchre with you once more for that has been the principal business since we came away and I suppose I can beat anything but the Old Boy and I guess I could stand my hand with him even.
I hope you will follow my direction in regard to fighting if you should happen to have a battle there. There is not much sickness here now except a few that are sick the same as Hen[ry] Leach was. Oh he’s a brave lad. Have you joined the Home Guards yet? I understand they are getting up a company down there in Brewer. We are coming home in May to clean them out and the 400 of the Bloody Second that are left can clean out the whole state.
We had a grand review of this brigade last Tuesday by Gen. McClellan & staff accompanied by the President & Secretary Seward. They came into the fort and saw us exercise the guns and like all the others, they gave us a very good name but still not seem to think much of our good clothes. And to tell the truth, I never saw the regiment look quite so bad before. Their clothes are a great deal more holy than righteous. Anyway, since then, there is an order been signed to do away with all grey uniforms so I think we shall get new ones soon.
We have first rate fare now—the best we have ever had. Soft bread every day and baked beans quite often, and a plenty of fresh & salt beef with tea and coffee do that we get along quite well. I don’t weigh quite so much as I did when I enlisted but I am a pretty tough cup generally and I suppose I could clean out about a dozen of such critters as you & Oliver are.
I want you to be a good boy & keep your nose clean and not tear your trousers while I am away and when I come back, I’ll buy you a stick of candy. But as it is about time to drill, I must close this letter. Write as often as you can spare time and write everything you know. I expected a letter from Mary today but did not get any. If I was there I would cuff her ears, but hoping to hear from you all, I remain yours, &c., — M. P. Nickerson
Letter 5
Hall’s Hill, Va.
November 25th 1861
Dear Sister,
As I have a few minutes leisure, I will scribble a few lines to you. I am well and doing well and we are in the same place yet and I see no prospect of moving yet a while. The weather is rather cold and wet here lately and we had a little snow storm on Sunday night and I was sergeant of the guard and we had to be on all night, so you see I got the whole benefit of it. But it did not last long, but is awful muddy here and growing worse every day.
There has been nothing of interest to write about since my last except the great review that came off last Wednesday about 3 miles below here. Our Division went. There was about 60 thousand men there and it was the greatest military show ever witnessed on this continent, I tell you that. Sixty thousand men on one field in a great muster. It did not make me think of a Down East muster a bit, nor I don’t think it resembled it a bit. And I think it would bother Col. Higgins some to handle them.
Uncle Abram [Lincoln] was there on horseback by the side of Gen. McClellan, or George as the boys call him, and as they passed down the lines, each regiment gave three cheers and Gen. Mac blushed up as red as a beet, but Old Abe merely took his hat off and rode on as cool as a cucumber. He has been in so many crowds this past year that he has got used to them whilst our young General is not much used to such things yet. Abe has an awful responsibility resting on his shoulders but I hope he will come out all right.
The great theme of conversation now is the expedition that is fitting out under Gen. Butler and I suppose that we shall hear of another strike on the southern coast somewhere before long. In my opinion, that is the place to fight the war. It should be carried home to the nest of secession and let them know what the horrors of war are. Let them see their houses and fields a smoking ruin, their families houseless, and know that they hated Yankees are at their doors and that starvation and ruin are staring them in the face and it will do more towards bringing them to their senses than all the big battles in Virginia can.
Oh, I should like to go to South Carolina and help wipe her out entirely and make government land of her again. I would fight for that as I never fought before, but Virginia and Tennessee and Kentucky, I pity, for they have been forced out of the Union and into this business whilst the more southern states where this business was first hatched have thus far escaped with only a damage to their pockets. But now at their own doors, the enemy is thundering and they are likely to reap the fruit of their own folly. But I have moralized on this subject long enough.
I had a letter from you about a week ago which is the only one I have had for a fortnight. I wrote to Mother last night, Tuesday night, and sent her some money but have not heard from her yet. Expect to soon. But I must close for it is time to fall in for Brigade drill. I shall send a paper with this with a full account of the great review. Write soon and give my love to all. Your brother, — M. P. Nickerson
Letter 6
Halls Hill, Virginia
December 1st 1861
Dear Sister,
I received yours of the 18th tonight and was very glad to hear from home once more—especially as I had not heard from home for a long time. I am quite well at present although I have had a little sick turn for a few days past caused by a light cold caught on picket and out scouting and fatigue, but have recovered entirely now and shall resume my duties tomorrow.
Everything is quiet in this section yet and I think will remain so until early spring for the roads are so muddy now that I think it will be impossible to move until they become settled in the spring and then after our immense naval forces shall occupy every important port & city of the southern seacoast this winter. With one grand sweep of this grand army, George [McClellan] will wipe out the bubble that Jeff Davis is pleased to call secession from the face of earth.
Jeff has already got frightened at the looks of things in Virginia and removed the capitol to Nashville, Tennessee, where Gen. Buell with about 50,000 men has gone to help him carry on his government, and I think that he will be a great help to him this winter. There has been a fight at Pensacola but we have not heard the particulars yet. The Southern papers are dumb on that particular subject but we shall probably hear soon the truth of the matter.
You can give my heartiest congratulations to Heman and Julin on the very pleasant accession to their domestic circle and tell them that I think that Melvina would be a proper, nice name for their illustrious stranger for I suppuse but they will now want to name it for something or someone that is in the army, and I really don’t know of a better name than her soldier uncle. Or I don’t know as I am just what you might call her uncle but the thing to it—sort of a half uncle. But tell them that if they don’t like that name, that most any other will do as well as I am not particular at all and a “Rose though called by any other name would smell as sweet.”
I should like to have gone on that excursion to Augusta to see Col. Goddard’s Cavalry make that splendid charge at an imaginary foe first rate—not that it would be anything of a new sight to me to see 1200 cavalry make and imaginary or even real charge at a foe. But I guess I should have liked the fun of the thing and I further guess that if the said charge had been near a plain where “leaden rain & iron nail” was sweeping like winter sleet and amid the crush & roar of battle, with the horrid shrieks and groans of the wounded & dying ringing in their ears, I think it would have taken the fun out of the thing wonderfully, for there is something in this experience of a real battle that is awfully grand and exciting. The cracking of thousands of muskets and rifles, the thick choking smoke, the shrieks of the wounded, the deafening yells and ringing cheers that burst spontaneously from the throats of some brave band as they go charging through this hailstorm of destruction, scattering slaughter and death in their track, forms a scene that to me makes Burns’ oft quoted line that “A man’s a man for all that” seem false for in such a time, a man is not a man but an incarnate demon. But that will do for battle scenes tonight.
I should think it was about time for Lieut. Hull to be back to his regiment if he has got spunk enough to come back at all which I hope he will not for he don’t among to anything here and he is just fit for folks to talk about there. As for that other thing belonging to the Second Maine that you have got loafing around there, he has neither sense enough for a man nor not enough for a fool. But perhaps it was the change of climate that operated so quickly. But if I don’t come home till I play sick to get a discharge, it won’t be right away for I hate a coward. I don’t mean to call any of the returned from the Bloody Second so by any means, but it looks queer at any rate.
You should not believe all of the stories that they tell about our fare for although it is hard enough, God knows yet I think from what I have heard, that they are stretching the story a little.
The news from Missouri has caused a general sorrow everywhere. We have lost in General Lyon one of the best and bravest generals in the service, and yet I think sometimes that it is all for the best for it but seems to rouse up the North to greater efforts and the day of reckoning will surely come for although they seem to triumph now, yet reverses will come and as yet as have never had a chance to try with anything like an even chance.
As to the movements on foot now, I know no more than you do for everything is conducted so quietly here that one sees hardly anybody save his own regiment and his immediate neighbors. And from our place here we would think that the government was entirely idle & did not intend to do anything more. But it is only the effect of wisdom combined with greater discipline & prudence and preparations of greater magnitude were never seen on this continent. For one little example, there was a train of heavy artillery arrived the other night that was a mile long when in marching order and that is about a fair sample and yet under McClellan’s master mind, everything moves with all the precision of clock work.
But it is getting late and I must close this already long letter. Either you or Mother wrote me that Mrs. Smith wanted to hear from Frank Birce. He is well or doing well and is a first rate fellow. Give my respects to all friends and answer soon. So good night. — M. P. Nickerson
Letter 7
Georgetown Union Hospital
March 26th 1862
Dear Sister,
I received yours of the 16th and 17th on Monday last and not take the first opportunity to answer. I am stopping at Union Hospital at present and as far as health is concerned, am much better than I was when I wrote last and have had but little of the chills for a week past. And the Doctor thinks that he has broken them up entirely and I hope so too for I don’t like them half as well as I do bread and butter.
You write that you have been looking for me home for several nights past. Well keep looking for I shall, or at least I think that I shall get there by the first of May if nothing happens and not much before. It is a very easy thing to be ordered a discharge and an easy thing to talk about it, but it is an entirely different thing to get it and to show you something about the process, I will tell you all about it.
First the surgeon orders a discharge and furnishes blanks and the Captain fills the descriptive part of them out and sends them to the Surgeon General’s Office for approval. They they are sent back to the Surgeon who first ordered them and he puts on his certificate of disability. and the cause which both he and the captain has to sign. Then that finishes that part of the business. Next the man must have another set of papers stating by whom he was enlisted, and by whom he was mustered into service. Also a statement of the pay & clothing he has received from the government and from whom or what officers he received it. Also at what time he received it. And after that is approved and signed by the captain of the company to which he belongs and also by the commanding officer of the regiment if he is with the regiment. If not, by the officer in command of the post where he is, he may consider himself fairly discharged. So that you can see that it must take some time to get discharged even after the order is given. If a man gets his papers all through in three months after they are commenced, he does well.
As for the regiment, all I can say is that it is gone somewhere and I am not allowed to say anything more about it. I would give a year’s pay to be able to be with them, that’s so.
The late war news is cheering. Everything is working finely, but I suppose that you hear it as soon as I do so I will not spend time to repeat it. As I suppose you will like to hear something about my present quarters, I will try and tell you about them and to commence, they are in a fine building in the city of Georgetown which you know joins Washington, and it is only a mile from this hospital to the White House and about a mile further to the [U. S.] Capitol. And as I am not very sick and am good chum with the doctor in charge, I have liberty to cruise around as much as I like. And I think of going to Congress a half a day tomorrow if it does not storm. I hope you won’t worry about my getting low and dissipated by going to such places for I shall be on my guard, I tell you, although I hate to associate with such characters as Congressmen and shall not do so more than is possible.
But I must close for my sheet is about full. Give my love to all and tell Mother that I shall write to her next time and that will be soon. Your brother, — Mell
P. S. Direct to M. P. Nickerson, Washington D. C.
Without regiment or company being on.
Spared & Shared 23 