Soldier's Letter, Civil War - May 1862

 Oxford Times, June 4, 1862

Fort Foster, Roanoke island, May 19, 1862

Editor of Times:  I wish through your columns to say a word to the friends of the volunteers now serving here.  Hot weather, with its attendant diseases is now coming on and it is of the utmost importance that the soldiers should be kept cheerful and happy.  Nothing will effect this more than good long letters, often received from home.  Our company sends weekly about three hundred letters home, and receives in return about thirty!  This should not be.  I, with our friends, could see with what anxiety the mail steamer is watched for, days before it arrives; of anxious eyes in hopes that it may prove to be the long expected mail steamer.  when the letters are distributed you should see the eager expectant faces as the names are called off; the look of joy which beams over the countenances of a lucky one, as he presses forward to grasp the treasure; the shadow which creeps over some faces, growing deeper as the pile of letters grows smaller, and their names are not called, and finally, the deep settled look of disappointment as the last name is called and they turn away imagining themselves forgotten by their friends at home.  One of the soldier's greatest comforts is reading letters received from the loved ones at home, and these letters exert a greater influence than the writer dreams of.  As a rule, the worst men in the army are those who receive but few or no letters from home. A soldier's life tends to induce a roving spirit.  Mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, if you wish to counteract this, write oftener, and thus bind our hearts to the home of our youth.  Do not let two-thirds of us turn away disappointed when the next mail is distributed, and I will warrant you that we will feel better, fight better, and come home at the close of the war better men.

Yours,   R.