Put here a knapsack, the rough, old, oil-cloth knapsack of the Confederate soldier. Poor fellow! he had but few clothes in it, but it contained something dearer to him than clothes—letters from home. He kept them all, the most of them written on the blank side of old wall paper and inclosed in brown envelopes, which perhaps had been turned so as to be twice used. When our poor boys were killed, their letters were gathered by the chaplains, litter bearers and burial details, to be sent to their homes. I am not going to tell what sort of letters were found in many knapsacks on our battlefields, but it is a fact, borne 62 out by the testimony of these men, that never was there found a letter from a Confederate soldier’s wife to her husband whose words would make the most modest blush, or in which she exerted any of her woman’s power or used any of woman’s arts to decoy him from the army. Here is a specimen of a letter from home in a Confederate knapsack:
Mitchell County, Ga., July 20, 1863.
Mr. Jno. Iverson,
Company B, Fourth Regiment, Army of Virginia.Dear John:
This leaves us all getting along very well. Nobody sick, and we finished laying by the corn. The cattle are fat and the hogs doing finely. We sell some butter and eggs every week. We have plenty to eat, and know that it’s only you that’s having a hard time. But we are all so proud that you are fighting for your country. Will be so glad when you can get a furlough, but we know that you must, and will stick to your post of duty. Willie and Jennie send kisses to their brave papa. We never forget to pray for you. If you get killed, darling, God will take care of us and we’ll all meet in heaven.
Your,
Mary.
That’s the way they wrote. Let that knapsack tell forever of the fortitude, the purity, the loyalty and refinement of the Southern woman.
Let the next picture be the humble hospital couch.
“Up and down through the wards where the fever
Stalks, noisome, and gaunt, and impure;
You must go with your steadfast endeavor
To comfort, to counsel, to cure.
I grant you the task is superhuman,
But strength will be given to you