Myron Mullett
26th Iowa Infantry
“I have looked at your pictures and I have been out in the park and down to the riverbank and saw a Regiment of soldiers leave for Vicksburg and so wandered around for I have not been to church today. …” Myron Mullett, May 31, 1863
May 31, 1863
Dearest Ida Mullett–
Once more I sit me down at the close of another pleasant Sabbath day to write and have a friendly little chit-chat with you, for it has been a rather long day to me. I have felt middling well too, but somehow it has seemed a little lonesome for I have been thinking about home and you and the babies. I have looked at your pictures and I have been out in the park and down to the riverbank and saw a Regiment of soldiers leave for Vicksburg and so wandered around for I have not been to church today. The fact is, I went to the office this morning but did not get any letter from you and then I didn?t somehow feel just like going to church, so I went and [got] a paper and lay down on my cot and looked at the pictures and read some in it, but the reading isn?t of much account. I will send it to you for your and the children to look at.
Well, I got a letter from Dave Ely. It was wrote on the 23rd. His folks was all well and so was the neighbors generally. Mr. Willey was dead. Little John has bought that 40 of land that I let go back and is breaking it up. Dove says that John?s wheat is the best there is around and that crops look 1/3 better than they did last year at this time. Well I hope they may get a good crop. He said there was none of our cows with calf. Well that?s too bad. I suppose I will have to pay him for wintering them, but he did not say anything about it. It was one of the two year olds that died, the rest was all well and in good condition. He says that the diphtheria has been band up there with children and that Mr. Esta, a man that lives up where Bill Willcox did last summer, lost three children with it within two weeks of each other.
This Mr. Ely had got a load of fencing for John to fix up the fence with?but darn the fence, it don?t worry me much nor any of the tarnal
[sic]
trash. What does it all amount to if one can?t have the comfort and pleasure of someone to have and enjoy it with him.
But still, I suppose we must look after these things and they may help pay expenses some have some have, but I would give all the cows and calves and three cheers for old McClellan in the bargain if that would end this all-fired, unearthly War. For we have already faced men enough to curse every nation on the fact of the earth. Why, Good Heavens, it has at got so that the government does not think they have had a fight unless they lose 5 or 6 thousand men. I was reading in something today, O? don?t mind what it was now, about some of our battles down the river and it says that we only lost fifteen hundred men. Just as thought that was nothing. Well, I suppose that it is nothing in comparison to what we have lost.
I suppose that we have lost over 20 thousand men killed and wounded within the last month, where I have seen a thousand men lying on the field. I thought it was an awful slaughter, men lying almost in heaps, mangled, and torn to pieces, but what were they to the tens of thousands?
But excuse me, Dear Annie, I wish not to pain your dear, fond, loving hearts with such horrid scenes and such tails of sorrow, but such scenes are common and almost of a daily occurrence. But then we get accustomed to such things here, from the fact that we know that it is a military necessity and our part to obey military law, bent to our liking and our not.
Well, if they would show less mercy to the Rebels and more to our own men, I think the thing would go off better, but still I say push the thing along now, and make a clean thing of it, if it takes ten years. But there is one thing that makes me fighting mad, and that is to think that we have not left men at home with spunk and purpose enough to put a stop to the blasted Rebel meetings up north. They allow them to hold regular conventions and plot schemes against the government. These are facts that can?t be denied. Why I ask, don?t they hang or shoot every son of a bitch of them! I wish to God that the Government would commission a brigade of us to come up north and clean them out.
I?ll be darned if I wouldn?t be willing to go without eating or sleeping until I could procure them too all-important articles of life and comfort from some thundering Copperhead up north. I want to know what is the use of trying to drive a parcel of cattle out of a cornfield on one side when you have left the fence all down on the other for them to keep coming in at. It is just good Lincoln sense and not a lot of common sense about it.
We may fight eternally in this way and be no better off in the end. Why don?t he speak up like a man in authority and say, I want such and such thing sot be done and then see that they are done promptly. Why doesn?t he put this ? Act through at lighting speed! No! No! It won?t do! He will sit and let the blasted Sesch and darned English sons of bitches blarney and parley and try every way to get out of doing anything to help support a government under which they live, and claim protection from our laws.
I tell you that every man that did not like our government well enough to help sustain it should be compelled to have it go to the Rebels as they like them so well. Do you suppose that I would allow my children when I told them to do anything to stand and parley with me and try every way to get off without doing it. No! Much as I love them, I think that they would get started. And has not Abe Lincoln the same power over this nation? Certainly he has, but he is neither a Nave or a Coward and goes on the plan of: Well boys, go and do this or do that, if you are a mind to, but if you don?t want to go why you can just stop and parley and excuse the thing. Tell somebody else that was willing to go do the work have nearly done the work, but are entirely exhausted and.. [rest of letter missing]
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