| Summary: | During the Civil War, Semple served as a captain of an artillery battery organized in Montgomery (known as Semple's Battery). He was later appointed a major and transferred to Mobile. In the letter he thanks his wife for her recent correspondence ("you think I don't like to gossip & chat at home, but I at all events like it in letters from my wife") and mentions a letter he wrote to the newspaper, criticizing "the many men who have got promotion without merit." He then discusses mutual acquaintances; the lack of reinforcements ("I see that conscription and enrollment, seem to have come to an end"); and the activities of the Union forces stationed in northern Alabama: "The yanks had carried from the place 125 negroes the unwilling as well as the willing, every single wagon or carriage, every pound of meat, had killed all the stock they could find carrying off the mules & horses...They destroy every thing & in fact I fear that the effect is a studied one to create such an hostility between the two peoples as can never be reconciled." Because of the increased hostility between Union and Confederate troops, some soldiers "refuse to take prisoners saying that they would rather kill them...If the war lasts 12 months longer there will be no such thing as taking prisoners." A transcription is included.
|
|---|
