Dated “Opposite Vicksburg, March 8, 1863, Sunday night”. 4pp, in ink, measuring 4.875 x 7.75”. Exhibits slight yellowing, else pristine & entirely legible.

Written to a “Girl I left behind Me” [addressed playfully as ‘my “dear child”, staff officer Waldo reveals himself as a highly imaginative & articulate correspondent. For example, he writes as follows of thunderstorms and their effects on soldiers on picket duty—“On such a night I am satisfied that the pickets will go to sleep in the underbrush, with their India-rubber blankets over their heads; consequently they won’t imagine they see any rebels, consequently they won’t shoot at the imaginary “rebs” as usual, and consequently, upon that, there won’t be any alarm, and I shall have a quiet night’s rest after finishing this note, lulled to slumber by the pattering of the rain on my tent, with a heavy basso accompaniment of thunder.”

He continues in the following tongue-in-cheek vein: “After our defeat at Vicksburg, from which we withdrew on New Year’s day, we made up in some degree for that failure by the Capture of Arkansas Post, in which my regiment was honorably distinguished….the night before the storming of the fort, the rebel batteries were guilty of a meanness which I never knew to be practiced before—they threw shells in the dark, when we could not see to dodge, and although they afforded us a very pretty specimen of fireworks, their pyrotechnic charms were destroyed by our knowledge that the practice was quite unsafe to the spectators—one might almost pronounce it dangerous. Shells in the day-time I don'’ object to-—n reasonable quantities; but at night—cuss ‘em, I say!”

He writes of the “coveted city of Vicksburg, which looks very beautiful in the sunlight, but loses much of its attractiveness when examined with a glass”—with its “endless lines of rifle-pits, the redoubts, forts, and batteries.” He mentions that he was “fortunate in being up about daylight a short time ago when the ram “Queen of the West” ran the gauntlet of batteries…..from the succession of flashes along the crests of the hills for miles gave us an inkling of the entertainment prepared for us when all the dogs, big and little together, should commence barking…and biting too.” After more entertaining commentary vis-a-vis the difficulties of taking Vicksburg, he concludes somewhat abruptly, saying, “I’m not done talking to you, but I must go to bed, to be up the morning. Good night.”

Lawrence Waldo was commissioned into Field and Staff, 83^rd Ohio Infantry on 7/21/1862. He was transferred to Co. “D”, 7/1/1863, and was promoted to Captain and transferred to Co. “B”, 8/12/1863. He was mortally wounded at Sabine Crossroads, 4/8/1864, and died at Alexandria, LA, 4/25/1863; buried at the Alexandria National Cemetery, gravesite 29-12.

The 83^rd Ohio Infantry was organized in the autumn of 1862 and saw service with the 13^th Army Corps, principally in the Department of the Gulf. The unit participated Sherman’s Yazoo expedition, and the Battles of Arkansas Post, Port Gibson & Champion’s Hill, as well as the Sabine Crossroads, and the later Red River Campaign, and operations against Mobile, Ala. The regiment was discharged in August 1865. During service it lost 56 men killed or mortally wounded and 163 by disease for a total of 219.

Superb letter, from “Opposite Vicksburg,” by a gallant and entertaining officer of the 83^rd Ohio. Brief amount of internet research material included.

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