© Copyright 2000 James David Pearce
Petty Shore
October 25, 1863
To: Isaac Pierce, Co. G, 31st Infty:
Dear brother:
My heart is bounding over at hearing word of you. Mr. S. B. Pool has come home. He has put away his uniform and is walking the roads around Harrellsville as bold as the daylight. He says he is not going to hide and he is not going to run, but he says he is finished with the great war. He says he is declaring a pox on Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Davis both and that they together can take the whole world to hell if they wish but he's not going to help either one of them any. And he said he'll tell the secesh sheriff that if he comes around.
I admire him, but I think he must now be a little crazy.
But I sure do respect him for bringing me word of you. He came over to the Academy and talked to Professor Sharpe and spent about a half an hour with me. He said you were doing well, but he said that you were a little sad. He said that my letters have been getting through to you and that you have been showing them to a lot of the boys from around here. In a way I'm proud of that but also I'm now afraid that I may have been a worry-wart that has been causing a lot of people like you to get upset and out of sorts with your own army. Mr. Pool said a lot of people like you and him were real unhappy to hear how things were down here, and that nobody had any stomach any more for going to Virginia to try to kill Yankees, and certainly not to Pennsylvania.
He said he was going over to talk to Elizabeth and Sarah, because he knew about what happened to Thomas and he knew about when it happened. He said that you and he were sitting safe in Raleigh doing guard duty when they sent the 17th down to Little Washington last year, where they lost Thomas. He said everybody knew Thomas had been shot – and a prisoner for his second time, too – but they didn't know that he had died in that Union hospital until you showed him my letter.
Mr. Pool is mighty upset. I don't want to say that he's gone completely daft, but he sure does rant a lot about what he calls the ruination of the world. You know he had some slaves, not many, but some, and now he says that this whole thing is their fault. Not that he can whip his coloreds for it now – they've long been gone to the river.
He says if they had stayed in Africa, our country wouldn't be going through all the turmoil, but Isaac, I really don't know. Sometimes I feel like there are a lot of people who would find something else to kill each other over even if there weren't any darkies around anywhere. I don't think colored people are the only thing that's wrong in this world. I'm hoping that there is a better kind of living somewhere around, and I'm hoping that I can find it. I don't think any more that I can find it with the CSA.
Adolphus is still staying in his lean-to, so Abigail says. She says he doesn't look too well and is walking kind of slow with the rain and cold snap we've been having. I guess he is kind of old, at least a year or two older than Cit. Good Lord, I'm praying that before winter really comes, something better will happen around here, and all the poor people can live better than they do no matter what they think about owning people.
The CSA won't be coming through to get Jack Fairless, though. He's been shot and killed. The word that came out at Job's wagon-shop is that Jack's whole crowd was celebrating with a lot of white lightning one night after a big raid, and they had a couple of women came back with them. They say that his top sergeant – I don't know his name – said something that made Jack mad, and Jack played the fool and ordered that the sergeant be hung. Well, word is that the sergeant didn't know if Jack was fooling or crazy, but didn't wait to find out. They said he took his long gun and put a bullet right through Mr. Fairless's ears. So that is that. They said the Union men came up from Plymouth and gave him a military burial, but that they didn't really act too unhappy about his accident.
The folks say that when the Unionists told the sergeant and all the rest of the men it was time to pack up and move on down to Plymouth and be some real help against the CSA, that every one of them either skulked or quick-timed into the woods, and not one of them turned up in Plymouth. So much for the buffaloes.
Do you think we should laugh or cry?
Your brother James
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