Raynors HCA 2017-06
This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 6/1/2017
A good war-date Union soldier's letter, 4pp. 8vo., written by Pvt. James Hiram Jones, Co. I, 24th Mass. Vols., [WIA Darbytown Road, VA 10/13/64], Petersburg, Va., Sept. 5, 1864, to his mother, in part: "I seat myself to write to you a few lines to let you now that your son thinks of you when he is laying in dismal forests…in the hot sun and the whizzing of bullets and roar of the cannons…I grown up to manhood and look back and see that I have been a bad boy in my younger days…now I can see the folly of it…I will try to do better in the future…I have sent home some money…don't let yourself want for anything…I don't know as they will do me any good for my life [is] in danger every moment. The shells are bursting in our camp most of the time and rifle balls whizzing over our heads all the time…if every man had done as much as I have done there wouldn't been a rebel a living now now. There is all sorts in this army, some good, some poor cowards. I don't want [you] to fret of my doings but see much good in the government that makes me almost crawl…mother you don't little know what war is and I [am] glad you don't. I don't think you would sleep if you knew. I look around me and see the marks of the dead bodies that they [bury] round me. It makes me think dear mother and father. I just eat a watermelon and I am going to send four or five seeds home…hope you will plant them and hope I shall get home [and] eat some of the melons that grow from them…from loving son, James H. Jones…". Jones' phonetic spelling has been corrected. Excepted soiling and toning, else VG
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