Camp, near Point
Pleasant, Mo., April 4, 1862.
I received your last letter within three days after it was
mailed, and praised Uncle Sam duly therefor. Our regiment has had a run of bad
luck since we've been here. Two men killed on the plank road, two wounded at
same place, two killed by falling trees in a storm of night of April 1st, and a
dozen wounded, and yesterday one drowned while watering his horse in the swamp,
and our horses dying off very fast of horse cholera. The latter is a serious
thing in a regiment were the men own the horses themselves. For they (or nearly
all of them) cannot buy others. Most of them are still owing for the horses
they have. The positions of troops and state of the war generally remains the
same here as it has been ever since we took Madrid. Main body of our forces at
that place. Five regiments here under Plummer and five seven miles further down
the river with Palmer. That is as far down as we can go on this side for the
swamps. Between here and Madrid we have batteries every three miles and the
Rebels have rather more on the opposite side. Both are right on their
respective banks and have their flags fluttering their mutual hatred in each
others faces. We can see them very plainly without the aid of a glass. The
Rebel gunboats lie just below our lower battery and 'tis rumored to-night that
several new ones have arrived from Memphis or New Orleans.
This fuss about “Island 10” I think is all humbug. Don't
believe they have attacked it yet. It don't sound like Foote's fighting. Look
on the map and see what a nice pen there is between the rivers Tennessee and
Mississippi. Don't it look that if Grant and company can whip them out at
Corinth, that we'll have all the forces at Memphis and intermediate points to “Island
10” in a bag that they'll have trouble in getting through? If they run it will
be into Arkansas, and they can take nothing with them but what their backs will
stand under. Seems to me that the plans of the campaign are grand from the
glimpses we can get of them and have been planned by at least a Napoleon.
Certain it is we are checkmating them at every point that's visible. I firmly
believe the summer will see the war ended. But it will also see a host of us
upended if we have to fight over such ground as this. It is unpleasantly warm
already in the sun. It's 10 p. m. now and plenty warm In my shirt sleeves, with
a high wind blowing, too. We had an awfu1 storm here to commence April with. We
are camped just in the wood's edge and the wind struck us after crossing a wide
open field and knocked trees down all through our camp; killed First lieutenant
Moore, one private, seriously wounded Captain Webster and a dozen men. During
the storm I though[t] of our fleet at “Island 10” and it made me almost sick. Don't
see how they escaped being blown high and dry out of water.
SOURCE: Charles Wright Wills, Army Life of an
Illinois Soldier, p. 76-8
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