Myron Mullett
26th Iowa Infantry
“but I am willing to help fight this infernal war as long as there is a man left that dares dishonor our glorious stars and stripes by this accursed Rebellion. …” Myron Mullett, December 13, 1862
Helena, Arkansas,
December 13, 1862
Dearest Ida–
I sit me down once more to write a few lines to you. I have just got back from camp and got my dinner, and now I write and try to have a little chat with you. I am well, only my cold, it is no better, and it makes me feel rather dull today, and besides, I never shut my eyes to sleep once last night. It rained all day yesterday and has all day today. It is getting quite muddy here and the roads are getting bad. This damp, wet weather doesn’t suit me at all, but I expect to have to take it as it comes and make the best of it.
I got some molasses and shugar [sic] last night and made a cup full of candy. Oh how I did wish for you to help me pull it as we would have had lots of fun.
I wish you had some of it and I had some horehound–to put in some for my cough, for my lungs are getting sore. But I won’t bother you with my troubles, for I know you have enough of your own to bother you.
Dear Annie, I hope you are well and enjoying yourself first rate with plenty of apples and cider and all the rest of the little fixin’s. Well, I presume you have them all, but then there seems to be something lacking… Well, Ida, dear Ida, I wish with all my heart that you had that something safely in your care….
The meanest Niggar in the South has his liberty more than I do and is a free man altogether, but I am willing to help fight this infernal war as long as there is a man left that dares dishonor our glorious stars and stripes by this accursed Rebellion. If our Officers and Headman would only crowd the thing along and try and do something. But if it is to hang in and nothing to be done for month after month and year after year, I have already made up my mind that I don’t want anything more to do with it. But the question is, how can a feller help it? That is a question only time can tell.
…I am going to lay down and take a little nap. You won’t scold me will you, dear? …I wish I could lay my head on your lap and take my sleep. How pleasant that would be.
Sunday Morning, the 14th
Dear, dear, Ida. I will try to resume my writing this morning, but it is under rather discouraging circumstances, for I don’t feel much like writing. The surgeon’s call has just beat and I am going up to the doctor’s to see if I can’t get some medicine for my cough for it is wearing on me a little past my lungs. It feels as though they are all raw, and my throat is sore enough. I have got my stocking pinned around it, but it don’t help so good as something else you used to put around it. Out I must go to get my drugs.
Well, I have got back to my tent again. The doctor gave me a dose of opium and morphine in a wineglass half full as brandy. I don’t know whether it will do me any good or not…
Choose from the Mullett Collection: Biography
20 Oct. 1862 | 13 Dec. 1862 | 1862/1863 | 1 Apr. 1863 | 22 May 1863 | 31 May 1863 | 18 Sept. 1863 | 30 Sept. 1863 | June 1865