I. D. Affleck Letter to Parents - May 12, 1863

Sparta Tenn.
May 12th 1863

Dear Mother & Father:

Haveing an opportunity of sending a letter home, by Dr. Harris of Austin Co. who has procured a substitute, I will take advantage of it, by writing a fiew lines home to let you know that I am well and hartey. I have not received a letter from home for nearly three months, it must be in the mails, I can not account for it in any other way, but I hope to hear soon. . . .

We have been lyeing idel here for about three weeks, sometimes two or three men are sent of[f] as couriers, but they are no more than pleasure trips. we have to hall our corn about fifty miles and we have only one wagon which only hold twenty-five bushels, and that is only two days fead so the wagon is going nearly all the time. Gen. Wharton was hurt badly the other day, by his horse running against a tree with him. he was running a race I think, when he run by the tree, it knocked him off of his horse and skined the in side of his leg, and mashed his toe very bady. he is able to go about on crutches now but he cant ride.

We have gained another great victory in Virginia but with the loss of some of our best officers. we had one Maj. Gen. killed and Stonewall Jackson had his right arm shot off. 28 I have not heard of any farther loss in officers or how many men we lost but I expect it is heavy[.] we had taken five thousand prisone[r]s up to last accounts. the Yankee cavelry went [with[ in three miles to Richmond, and went out again. I wish we had been there, I think we could have stoped them before they got that far. We heard the other day that Gen., Van Dorn had been killed by a citizen down in Alabama, but [don't] know what it was about. 29 We heard also that Grand Gulf had been taken but I dont believe it. The yanks it is sayed are marching on Natchez with a large force.

I am without a horse yet, and expect to be untill I can buy one my self. we have been out buying horses for the company now, but I dont expect they will bring any in. I would like to get me another horse [and] I think I will succede better with him than with others that I have had, a good horse will costabout five-hundred dollars if not more. In my last letter I wrote for severalthings that I stand in nead of and can not get here, at any rate I hope you will send me the Saddle and pistols if nothing else.

I dont think the war will last much longer, I expect to be at home by the first of October next. I hope you will write more often than you have done heretofore, you dont know how much a letter from home revives a fellow[;]it raises his spirits and helps him more than any thing else. I intend to write regularly hereafter, but as my stock of information has run out I must close. . . .

[I. D. Affleck]

Footnotes:
28.This was the battle of Chancellorsville, in which Lee defeated a much larger Federal force commanded by Joseph Hooker. Jackson was wounded by his own men, and died on May 10, 1863.
29. Much controversy surrounds the death of Confederate Gen. Earl Van Dorn on May 8, 1863. He was shot and killed at his headquarters at Spring Hill, Tennessee, by one Dr. Peters, who claimed Van Dorn had "violated the sanctity of his home." Van Dorn's defenders, however, deny this and attribute his death to political emnity. See Allen Johnson and Dumas Malone (eds.), Dictionary of American Biography (New York, 1956), XIX, 185-186.

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.

 

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