Click here for this soldier’s biography:
https://micivilwar.com/authors/gibbs-amos/
Regiment: 28th Michigan Infantry
Battles Mentioned:
Historical Figures:
January 13, 1865 College Hill General Hospital, Number 2, Section 6, Tent 5
Nashville, TN
My dear boy:
I am glad you are trying to learn to write so you can write to me. It will be a
good while before you can see your father again and you will be a large boy by that
time and I hope you will good acorders. If you like your father, you will try and
learn every day to read and write. Remember I want you to mind your mother and
do what she tells right away without waiting for her to tell you the second time.
And when you go on an errand you must go and then come right back and not stay
to play. Your mother will let you go and play when she thinks it proper and if you
mind and are good boy all the time you will grow up to be a good man and a
comfort to your mother and father.
If he should ever come home I will bring you children something that will
please you much. I live in a cloth house as big as the house you live in. There is one
hundred cloth houses here and eighteen hundred convalescing soldiers in them.
There is no snow down here. It is frozen here now so it ain’t muddy. There is never
no sleigh riding in this city. Some times the ground is white with snow. It does not
lay on the ground only until the sun comes out and then it all goes off.
Amy, I don’t want you to let anyone know what I wrote in that other letter. I
will mail it today. You need not say anything about my being out of money. I am
tired now and it is almost noon, and I must go to my dinner. I am going to see our
State agent and talk with him and I shall know what I shall do in the future. I may
stay here but I don’t think I will.
I want you to answer this other letter immediately so I can know if you can
send me them things. Direct your letter to General Hospital, Number 2, Section 6,
Tent 5, Nashville, Tenn.
Alonzo, good bye, be a good boy for me.
