Quarantine Station On the Lower Mississippi
72 miles below New Orleans
February 14 [1863]
I sit down to write to you today. I have not much to say but as it takes a good while to get a letter to the North, I will say what little I have now. Today is Valentine’s Day. We don’t see anything that looks like it here. It is a nice warm, pleasant day—as warm as June. The birds are singing and the grass and trees are green and it is pleasant. The nights here are very damp and foggy. Just as soon as sunset, it grows damp and the boys have to be careful or they will get the shakes into them. The dew is very heavy. It is as wet in the morning as if it had rained.
We are ashore quartered in the brick warehouse. We have got pretty good quarters. But the land is low and swampy around here and unhealthy. After the anchored us out in the stream, we expected we should have to stay there 30 or 40 days. So the boys made a fuss about it and went so far as to get up a petition to send to Gen. Banks. They heard of it up to the city at the Medical Department and sent down and ordered us ashore. We have our rations dealt out in a raw state and we cook them ourselves. We take and build up stoves of brick and and mud—there is no stoves here—and take our dippers and make our coffee and our plates and fry our pork and have a good time.
The mosquitoes bother us a good deal. They are twice as big as the ones at home and when they bite, we feel it. The Jenny Lind has come up and passed right along up the river. They had a man die on the way, It was Israel Parker in Company G. He is an oldish man and used to be on provost at Boxford. He had the tremors,
As the Jenny Lind went past, I saw Sylvanus. He was well and hearty, We have lots of cases of small pox here and two have died. Townsend George ¹ has been sent to the hospital with the varioloid. A[ndrew J. Hill has the small pox and in in the hospital. Ed. Johnson is sick with the congestion of the brain and is pretty sick. Yesterday our Captain wrote up to William and let him know it and then there is cases breaking out every day. These three men are in our company. The men that died of the small pox belonged to a New York Regiment. None of ours have died.
I am well and can eat my ration. I think if I get through this without having the small pox, I shan’t ever be afraid of it. I have been exposed to it as much as anyone could be. I don’t see any signs of ever getting away from here this good while. I think we shall have to stay here 40 or 50 days. The other companies in our regiment have been paid off. I don’t suppose we shall get paid off while we are in quarantine. Capt. [John Langdon] Ward is at the city doing business for the troops.
Yesterday morning the U. S. transport ship passed here with troops. Royal Gould and Ryland F. Bailey—they were taken off the Planter when she was in a sinking condition. She went down and everything was lost. They will go to the regiment. Gould had some letters for some of our boys. They were some that he took when he was in Haverhill. I haven’t got a letter since I was in Philadelphia. It’s as though I ought to have some somewhere on the road. The other companies in our regiment were paid from August and they say our time commenced then. I hope it did. If it did commence then, our time is out the 15th of next May—only three months more. I think this Fiftieth Regiment is a useless expense to the government. We should have been in Philadelphia if it had not been for our Major [Hodges]. He was afraid he would not get promoted if they stayed there. We hear no news at all here. I have not seen a paper for six weeks. A fellow in the army don’t hear no news at all.
Please write as often as you can and I will when there is anything to write about. Direct your letters to Co. F, 50th Reg. Mass. Vols. , New Orleans.
From your son, — R. M. Graham
at the Quarantine on the Mississippi
¹ Townsend P. George was twenty years old when he enlisted at Haverhill in Co. F, 50th Massachusetts. He saw subsequent service in Co. C, 17th Massachusetts.
The Letters of Rufus Melvin Graham, drummer for the 50th Mass. Vols. 