From The Second Iowa Cavalry

BIRD’S POINT, Feb. 25, 1862

FRIEND SANDERS:  The second remains here, and have got pretty well fixed up; but only for a short time.  Orders have been received from the Colonel to turn over all the tents and baggage that can possibly be dispensed with, and the expectation is, that we will soon be on the move.

On Wednesday I was over at Cairo sighting about the gun and mortar boats.  The Benton, the largest of the gunboats, and the most complete, will be finished by the middle of next week.  She carries sixteen heavy guns, and her forward guns are being taken out and replaced with those still heavier.  The mortars are grim looking monsters four feet long and forty-seven inches in diameter across the muzzle – the bore thirteen inches.  They throw a shell weighing two hundred and thirty pounds four miles.  There is thirty of them – about half of them yet on the railroad track by the river; the others are on the boats.  The boats are about fifty or sixty feet long and twenty wide with an iron bulwark extending seven feet high above the deck, of half inch iron, [loopholed] for sharp shooters – one mortar on each boat.  When they give their compliments to the enemy look out for a victory.  They are at work on them day and night, and the fleet will perhaps be ready in eight or ten days.

I saw several hundred of the “Donelson birds” going from the boat to the cars for Chicago.  In reply to the question “How is affairs at Nashville?” put to an intelligent looking Tennessean among the lot, his reply was “When you get there you will find two-thirds of them as you are.”

The steamer D. G. Taylor was loading with the Government tobacco taken up the Tennessee river, and the small arms taken at Donelson were also being exchanged from another boat.  As they passed along from one to another, one’s taste for variety in the matter of fire arms could be fully gratified – here would come an old flint lock musket, then an percussion lock, then an old fashioned U. S. rifle in use years since, then a single barrel shot gun, or a double barrel, then an old fashioned game rifle, one half were of the last named kind.  Many a poor fellow will miss his squirrel gun next hunting time.  Every man must have furnished his own ammunition as it could not be very well issued to suit so many different styles and calibers of arms.  More anon.

DIFF.

(As the remainder of our correspondent’s letter relates to the prowess of the 2^nd Iowa regiment, obtained from conversation with returning soldiers, and is a repetition of that which we have already published, we omit it. – ED. GAZ.)

– Published in The Davenport Daily Gazette, Davenport, Iowa, Monday Morning, March 3, 1862, p. 2