General Hospital, Gallipolis
Jan 31st 1863
Dear Wife,
I have just received your kind letter of Thursday last. I am getting along very well yet much better than I could expect the only difficulty now is I feel too well to be confined indoors. I have a very bad cough yet but it is getting somewhat loose now and I think it will soon get better. Don’t give yourself any uneasiness about me whilst I am here. I fare much better than a great many poor boys do in camp. Sure, I am here among total strangers, but they are all brother soldiers from this and other states and like true brothers they are toward me and one another.
I will not in all probability go to my regiment before the first of March as the exposure would be too much for one just out of a spell of Measles – so I have been told – but I have thought I would try and get home before I go to get a coat or blanket that would in some ways answer in the place of the coat I had burnt.
[continued from 31st]
Feb 1st
I feel pretty well today. Only I have a very bad taste in my mouth and I have but little appetite for what I get to eat. I get toast, tea, butter, dried fruit, and berries. There are upwards of 400 in this hospital now, but nearly all of them are able to get around and wait on themselves and others. The most of the men here are from Morgan’s Army.
O! When will this wicked rebellion cease that we may all return home to our homes and friends in peace? And the thousands poor fellows that are now suffering all the human miseries imaginable may return where they can have their applications soothed by the hand of kind mothers, wives, sisters, and kind friends? I have learned more about the hardships that our men have been subject in the Army since I came here than I ever knew before.
You spoke about your sadness on my leaving home. Dear wife, you can hardly imagine my feelings then, but I could not speak them. I did not get to tell Father and Andy goodbye as I was so hurried. Tell them I did not intend it. After we moved off from the station I got in the baggage car and arranged the boxes. Mine cost 40 cents clear through. Finemoars and Beards cost $1.25 through as baggage. After we left Chillicothe, I felt rather sad so I go on the platform outside and here my thoughts turned towards home. I thought how fast I was being separated from all that I could claim as being near and dear to me on earth. And perhaps never again to meet them again on earth. I thought, “Could it be possible that I had given up all these and gone to endure the hardship and exposure of a soldier’s life for my country?” I can’t say that it was anything else, for nothing but conscience prompted me to it, and I am sure I never could have felt right without doing as I have in this terrible affair.
And I trust you, nor any of you, will condemn me for it. Our days on earth are but few at most and if I am permitted to get home safe and attend to my business as I used to, we should all be thankful for it, but if I should fall, I hope you will all view it in a true sense that I died in a honorable cause – one that no one should be ashamed of. And when we all come to meet the stern realities of that beyond the tomb, may we all enjoy that blissful hope where trials, troubles, and disappointments are said to be at an end.
We got to Portsmouth the same day I left home. We did not meet with any boat going to Gallipolis until Sunday, 10 O’clock. This boat was the Marmora, heavy loaded, and did not get to Gallipolis until 4 P.M. Monday. I was obliged to leave her and on to the Hospital. The boat went on up the Kanawha and met the Regiment I suppose next morning coming down. I didn’t see them as they came past, but I could hear the drums playing, the boys cheering, and the boats puffing. O how I longed to be with them, but I dursn’t even look out the door at them.
I have not heard anything from them yet. I don’t know what they have done with my clothes nor anything else. If you hear from them, let me know.
Jacob Shively
A Thousand Thunders 