Letter from a Confederate soldier’s wife

B -- N --, Dec. 17, 1864.

My Dear B --: Christmus is most hear again, and things is worse and worse. I have got my last kalica frock on, and that's patched. Everything me and children's got is patched. Both of them is in bed now covered up with comferters and old pieces of karpet to keep them warm, while I went 'long out to try and get some wood, for their feet's on the ground and they have got no clothes, neither; and I am not able to cut the wood, and me and the children have broke up all the rails 'roun' the yard and picked up all the chips there is. We haven't got nothing in the house to eat but a little bit o' meal. The last pound of meet you got from Mr. G -- is all eat up, and so is the chickens we raised. I don't want you to stop fighten them yankees till you kill the last one of them, but try and get off and come home and fix us all up some and then you can go back and fight them a heep harder than you ever fought them before. We can't none of us hold out much longer down hear. One of General Mahone's skouts promis me on his word to carry this letter through the lines to you, but, my dear, if you put off a-comin' 'twon't be no use to come, for we'll all hands of us be out there in the garden in the old graveyard with your ma and mine.

From: Pickett and His Men by LaSalle Corbell Pickett (Atlanta, 1899).