© Copyright 2000 James David Pearce
Petty Shore
September 6, 1863
To: Isaac Pierce, Co. G, 31st Infty:
Dear brother:
Well, the Union men came up in full pack last week. It was a big movement and we thought maybe for a while that they had come to this side of the river to stay, but it wasn't to be. It looks like about all they were after was a whole lot of beef, pork and corn and cotton stored on the Alfred Wright farm way west of St. Johns. They came with a lot of wagons and cleaned the place out, and after three or four days headed back the way they came, by Powellsville and Trap and Colerain.
In a way, a lot of us were kind of glad when we heard a lot of them were on the move, and I guess we were all a little sad when they got what they wanted and turned around and headed straight for their camp at Plymouth. I guess you being in the CSA might think heavy of me for talking like this, but sometimes I feel like we'd be a lot better off if they would stay around here when they come through, and let the rest of these other secessionist folks depart. I've come to the place I think the northerners might be better people than some of our own kind.
I think mama feels the same way, too, but she keeps mostly quiet and don't like to hear us talk too much like that. I know Abigail is thinking that way. But Abigail is plain lonesome. Except for good old lame Job, there just are not any real menfolk in the neighborhood to speak of, except for some former well-off ex-secessionists having truck now with the Yankees, a few old poor men hobbling around, and sprouts like me that the world hasn't decided what to do with yet. Everybody else is poor womenfolk and younguns, and that leaves Abigail at her age with nothing living-like to do. The Union boys haven't been visiting around here too much recently, I guess because of the work that they had to do out from St. Johns and the jitters about the CSA forage men.
I kind of know what Abigail feels. I think I have some of the same. There are some young ladies around here that I have to say are real pleasing to my eye, and I think if times were different, like they used to be when you were here, I might have something to say to one of them. My 18th birthday sits like a big black door in a big black wall running all across a field that I'm walking through, and I don't have any idea what is on the other side of that wall. I wish there was no war, and I could stay here in the fields forever, and raise me a family. I'd like to have some little boys and girls of my own, and my own mules and horses and cows and pigs. But sometimes I start looking at that big black door down that dark, lonely road, and I just about hang down my head and cry. Damn Jeff Davis.
Mama is learning to read some. Abigail and Priscilla are helping her with her words. She's not so great with books but she has a whole lot of sense in her head for a woman. When I get too excited or too upset with things that are going on, she knows how to pull me back with a cautionary word. All the world's brains are not in books, I know, even if I do tend toward them because they help me keep from going off.
She hasn't heard from Mr. Askew or Cit in a year, I don't think. She doesn't have the least idea where they might be or if either one of them will ever come home, or if they do what kind of physique they might be in. She wants to be friendly with Abigail's Union fellows, but she holds herself back I know because what do you do when you have a husband and two sons off somewhere in the CSA, and no real men anywhere around you but these blue-coated northerners? I guess you must still feel true to the CS, but I hope when the good Lord allows us all to get together again some day that you will be understanding with your brother, sister, family and neighbors that sat around the eating table and talked with Yankees just like they were regular people.
I know that what is really worrying mama is the After. She's lived long enough to be able to say and to know that these things, too, shall pass just like the Bible says they will. She's worried some about what will happen if we all die before these things pass, and she's worried a lot about what will happen if these things pass and we still have not died.
I have heard her ask Abigail that if this all should end, by surprise, then where would our blue-coat friends go and where would we be? Where will we be if the Hinnant Edwardses and the Alfred Wrights all come back mad as hops wanting to gather in all their once-legal human property and tell the secesh sheriff to straighten this county out from its philandering ways?
She asks: what will we do when the neighbor-women's menfolks come home from the CSA without an arm and a leg but with a big hate for Mr. Lincoln and the folks that let the slaves loose? You can see hardness now in Elizabeth's face when the blue-coats are around, and I know it's because of Thomas.
What are we going to do if we jump sides for convenience now and the conveniences all fade away when that side backs away? Are neighbors ever going to live again with neighbors that stole from them and shot at them and mortally angered them? She asks how many children will have to be born and will have to die around here before the feuding eases. Even if we stop fighting outright, are we ever going to be able to live together again with all the terrible memories and silent hates? Lord, I can't answer. I don't know what to do or where to go. I have never had anything to do with slaves one way or the other, and Lord knows, sometimes I wish I had never heard of one. About all I can say is what I have said before. Damn Jeff Davis.
Your brother James
P.S. We surely had a bad windstorm and a fierce rain here the other day. It rained and blew almost two days. The Federals went back just in time not to get drowned on dry land. I never saw the like of the rain, and the wind took down some timber in mama's near fields, but I don't think it was enough to hurt. There's a whole lot of trees still standing, and the upper creek has gone back to its bed now, but I don't know about the peanuts and cotton.
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