[Autograph letter, signed, by a Union soldier to his mother]

Camp near Carthage, Tennessee, 1863. Loose leaf. Near fine. Bifolium, 9 3/4 inches (folded). [3] pp. Manuscript letter in an addressed envelope with stamp, postmark, and cancel. Wear and slight discoloration on blank verso of second leaf at folds, else near fine.

A gripping Civil War letter home from a Union private to his mother from outside Carthage Tennessee, where his company and regiment - Company H of the 89th Ohio Infantry - had just established a Union outpost to combat a guerilla insurgency in the region. The author, Elijah Rockhold, Jr. (1844-1924) of Bainbridge, Ohio (Ross County), writes as he is recovering from jaundice and preparing for a possible battle. He begins the letter with an account of his company making "a scout" up the Cumberland River as he remained at camp convalescing. At a town 30 miles up the river, the soliders confiscated approximately 1000 pounds of feathers, 300-400 bushels each of corn and wheat, and "ten intelligent contrabands" - enslaved people freed from the enemy and now under the care of the Union Army. Rockhold writes, "we have one of them cooking for our mess he dont know mutch about it But I think I can train him in a few days as I am pretty good on a cook." Of the same expedition, Rockhold describes a "serious ackcident" in which an apparent misunderstanding led to the shooting of one member of the company by a guard near the company's boat.

In the second part of the letter, written six hours later, Rockhold tells of a woman who had just arrived at the camp on horseback to warn that "the enemy was in 7 miles of our camp and that there was from five to seven thousand strong." He concludes, "I will go to rubbing up my fowling piece and be ready for them."

No battle came then, but six months later most of the members of Company H, including Rockhold, were captured by Confederate forces at the Battle of Chickamauga (September 18-20, 1863). Rockhold spent the next 15 months in the Danville and Libby prisons, where the deprivations left him in a permanently weakened state. Despite his condition after the war, Rockhold managed to attend Miami University, establish himself in business, and live to the age of eighty.