CIVIL WAR LETTER - 104th New York Infantry - Taken Prisoner at Battle Gettysburg

Description

CIVIL WAR LETTER
Written by Sergeant in Co. A, 104th New York Infantry
This Civil War soldier letter was written by Reuben Randolph Weed (1827-1919), the son of Reuben Weed, Jr. (1798-1888) and Lucinda Durkee (1799-1889) of Nunda, Livingston County, New York. He wrote the letter to his wife, Mary E. Weed (1833-1897).
35 year-old Reuben enlisted as a sergeant in
Co. A, 104th New York Infantry
in September 1861 and rose in rank to Lieutenant before he was discharged in December 1863. He fought in all the major battles of the Army of the Potomac until he was taken prisoner at the Battle of Gettysburg. His sister, Zuelma (Weed) Lowell wrote him a letter some five weeks after the Battle of Antietam in which Lt. Weed’s men fought in the famous bloody cornfield—the regiment suffering 82 casualties.
Transcription
Camp Union, Geneseo [New York]
February 21, 1862
My dear Mary,
Since you have so much confidence in my doing just as I agree. I will now say that we have orders to leave here next Tuesday or Wednesday afternoon. Now it is so that I must say goodbye for it seems much more like going than it did when I kissed you goodbye so early that morning. But Mary, I do not think nor harbor anything like not coming back, but if it be so that I fall upon the battlefield, I leave myself in the hands of one that says He will protect the right and I think we are in a just cause and I know you think so, and I think a good deal of that, for Mary to
think
or
know
that I am in the right, and I know she thinks more of me for enlisting and I think she ought to for she wrote me such a letter after I had been a
soldier
so
long
. But we will let that all go since you said you was sorry for it and that is all I ask.
I received your letter in time and suppose I may say that you need not write to me again in Geneseo (and that seems strange too) now. I will write again as soon as I know anything new but perhaps not again until we get to Albany. (But I think I shall go home before I go to Albany.)
Now that is so
—so goodbye for this time.
Now Mary, I am in a great hurry and you must excuse me this time, remembering that Randolph is the same while a soldier as when on a visit to see Mary. But when I have charge of the company, I do not appear much like a lover. (I am going to be sent for a man in 30 minutes.) So goodbye. I will write in a few days.
To my Mary. — Randolph
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