I. D. Affleck Letter to Parents

Camp near Chattanooga
June 11th 1862

Dear Mother & Father:

It has been a long time since I last wrote to you but it has been no fault of mine. I have had no opportunity to sind a letter home but I heard last night that some one was going home and if so I will sind this by him—I had chill and feaver day before yesterday but have been [on] quinine today and think I will miss it. We are camped near the N &c R.R. about ten miles from Chattanooga at a fine spring. I and about fifty others are with the wagons[;] another part is at or near Chattenooga[;] the other part is down the river some where. Nearly all the men are dissatisfied with the commanding officers of the regiment [and] are trying to get transfers[;] if Oswald [Tilghman] gets me one I will leave myself.

We had rough time comeing over mountains to this place-it is at least one hundred miles across, and we are six days crossing—The yankeys are crossing the river above Chatenooga and a fight is expected to come off every day. We have between nine and eleven thousand men—with artillery enoug to whip them—we heard here that we had fallen back from Corinth and that the enemy had advanced and shilled our camp for a whole day before they found out that our troops had left. Before you get this I suppose you will have heard of the great victory we have gained in Virginia. and before long hear of our possession of Baltimore. There is a report here that Andy Johnson was killed in Nashville a feiw days ago by a young man who shot him four times with a six shooter[;] his name was given but I forget[;] it must be so because the report was brought by a man who says he was an eye witness.

The Yanks are in Rienza the place where I left my valiece with most of my clothes and I suppose have found them before now—the things were put in a private house about three miles from town up in the third story of the hose but it makes very little difference whether they have them or not because it may be three or four months before I will get back there gain. We expect to go up into Kentucky very soon and it may be months before we get back. I hate to get away so far because I can not get a letter home or get one from home—You had better direct letters for me to Corinth because I do not know where our army has fallen back to and all the letters for soldiers will be stoped at some place and forwarded on—

I have missed my chill today and dont think I will be troubled with them again soon. The man that is going home as I understood will only go down into Miss. to spend a month, and no farther. When we were on the other side of the river I saw Wallace[;] he was on his way to Corinth—he went from Virginia to Kentucky and was sick in the Hospital when the Yankeys took him and whin he got will they kept him as a prisoner until he had an opportunity to get away, he says he will enlist again. Dr. Gulich wrote to you through his wife the other day and you will get this letter fore you get mine so that you will not be kept uneasy about me. I will not send this off now but will wait untill some one leaves direct for Texas—

[I. D. Affleck]

Affleck, Isaac D., "With Terry's Texas Rangers: The Letters of Dunbar Affleck," ed. by Robert W. Williams and Ralph A. Wooster, Civil War History, Vol. 9, Sept. 1963, pp. 299-319.