Battery Anderson, Virginia
December 1864

Dear Wife,

I will now try to pen a few lines hoping they will find you in good health for I am well as usual. I am very sorry, my pet, that you are out of money and in trouble, for it is my fault in your being so and I will try and mend the matter as soon as possible. You must try and get along if you can till i get paid off. If you can’t, let me know of it and I will try and borrow some money to send to you. I would try now but if I do borrow any, I will have to pay two dollars for every one that I get and I don’t want to do so of I can help it for when I do send you any money, I want to try to send you all that I can for as you say, everything is high and everything will be higher before winter is over. And if I can send you a hundred dollars by the middle of next month, I think that you can make out till I get paid again in two months more after that. And if I borrow twenty-five dollars to send to you, I will have to pay fifty for it next pay day. I can say with the Irishman now that it is hard up I am entirely for I can’t get nary stamps or envelopes. I had to borrow the envelope that I sent my last letter in and shall have to do the same by this one.

I don’t like this place for I get hard up here for I can get tobacco anywhere else but I can’t here. It was just so with me when Willard Potter was here and I was so ashamed to be out of money that I could take no comfort with him. I am glad that he has got home. Tell him again, Pet, that it is just the same here as it was last spring—only the rebs has got our old picket line on the plain between the woods and that we have picket firing constantly just as it was in front of Petersburg when he left for home. And that it was still here all summer till now. I would liked to have seen him before he left and tried to for he was in camp only about half a mile from us when he started for home. Tell him that the old Ninth Corps is here with us and he will know why we have picket firing for they are all niggers. you know how you sit and watched the niggers when you was at Fort Richardson? Well I have to think of that now for we have got that regiment here with us and I have to watch and laugh now to see them run when the Rebs fire a gun and the shell bursts anywhere near them. But they will fight like tigers.

There, I have had to stop writing and go to firing. We have been at it all the afternoon and I am tired so I will stop for the night. My love to you and all, my pet.

Your loving husband, — C. A. Chapman, Co. D, 1st C. V. A.

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