The following letter was written by Christopher L. Davis (b. 1818) who entered Co. G, 29th Indiana Infantry as a private and was commissioned a 2nd Lieutenant on 2 May 1863. He resigned his commission on 14 November 1864. Christopher was born in Virginia but was living in LaPorte county, Indiana by the early 1840s and was married to Jemima Warwick in May 1845. He was enumerated as a farmer with his wife and five children in Springfield township, Laporte county, in the 1860 US Census. After the war, Christopher and his family moved to Chattanooga, Tennessee where he worked as a house carpenter.
The 29th Indiana was organized at Laporte, Indiana, and mustered in August 27, 1861. They were ordered to Kentucky and joined General Rousseau at Camp Nevin October 9, 1861, then attached to Wood’s Brigade, McCook’s Command at Nolin, Ky., to November, 1861; 5th Brigade, Army of the Ohio, to December, 1861.
The regiment first saw action at the Battle of Shiloh. “…People mainly tell me that the Rebels can’t fight. They can fight just as well as we can!” wrote Harvey Grable, a member of Co. E, to his mother a week after the battle. [See John Harvey Grable to Mary F. Grable, letter dated 15 April 1862, Spared & Shared 22]
Transcription
Camp Wood
December 13, 1861
Dear Friend,
I take my pen up to write you a few lines to inform you where we are and what we are about. We moved on this place last Wednesday and we marched 15 miles farther into secesh. We are now where we can lay down on our back to look up to tops of the hills and eight miles from the secesh and about fifty thousand soldiers around us, with plenty of cannon and ammunition, [and] plenty to eat. But we are in a land that is cursed with the negro and if you could only look on us and the great preparation that is made, you would think that the war would soon come to a close. But [we] are a going have some hard nuts to crack yet.
Where we are now, the secesh burnt the railroad bridge one week ago but now it is built up again and before you get this letter, I think that we will have something to do. We are going to make a move on Monday on to Bowling Green where Buckner is said to be fortified and our men are eager for a fight.
Men that never saw a movement of soldiers have no idea of the scene. Last Wednesday we were more than ten miles long and [as far as] you could see. The barefooted whites and blacks look like they thought that the angel Gabriel was blowing his trumpet, and from the noise you would have thought like an old man that we met on the road when he said that if he was a secesh, he would quit this world and climb a white oak tree. Says where did all of dese foks come from.
We are generally well. All of the boys from our part of the country are well and you will hear a good account of them when they come into a battle. We will give them fits first and then we will give them blue pills and powder to cure them. Where [we] are now, the grain is standing in the shock and the hay is in the cock and everything looks desolate—fences burnt, houses left vacant. But some of the owners are trying to get back. War desolates wherever it goes and I never want it to come any nearer to us that it is.
The weather is good here—pleasant and warm days but frosty nights. But we do not suffer in our cotton houses. Our beds are a bunch of hay out of the cock and a blanket for our cover. And yet we are comfortable and merry as larks. When night comes, you can hear many songs, fiddles and all kinds of noise. It is like building the Tower of Babel.
The boys went out today to get some chickens to eat and they found six at the moderate price of twenty-five cents and took them the [hen?], but when we get home, we want another picnic to make up for this and if you have any secesh up with you, just tell them that we are among their friends and we will clean them out and then come and give them a turn, and I tell you, it will do me good to do it.
B____’s boys 1 sent home twenty dollars to their father and the boys are good boys and I think that it will be a benefit to them if they ever get back. Give my respects to all of my union friends and tell them that I will do my best for my country but the secesh tell them to keep themselves clear for I hate them worse than ever. They are nothing but thieves and bridge burners here and if they had a chance, they would be nothing else as they would not have any sympathy for them.
We have four contrabands with us and some of the regiment get some every day. We make them cook for us. When we get through, we will have more of them [than] we will know what to do with and I think that old Abe ought to begin to send them to someplace now for they are the lowest of all creation. The more I see of it [slavery], the more I hate it. They have cursed all of Kentucky and all other lands where it lives and God speed the end now.
Dear friend, I have wrote you a few lines siting on the ground on a bunch of grass with a board on my lap which is all the desk that a soldier has now. I must close. You must write to me what is going on. Direct your letter as you do B____’s letters and they will come to me. Your friend, — Christopher L. Davis
1 Probably David Meredith Love (1841-1908) and his brother James Love (b. 1838). They were both living in Springfield township when they enlisted in 1861 in Co. G, 29th Indiana Infantry.
Spared & Shared 23 