The letters of the common soldiers are rich in humor.
Indeed, no richer humor is to be found in the whole of American literature than in the letters of the semi-literate men who wore the blue and the gray.
Some of their figures of speech were colorful and expressive.
A Confederate observed that the Yankees were: "thicker than lise on a hen and a dam site ornraier".
Another reported that his comrades were "in fine spirits pitching around like a blind dog in a meat house".
A third wrote that it was "raining like poring peas on a rawhide".
Yanks were equally adept at figurative expression.
One wrote: "(I am so hungry) I could eat a rider off his horse & snap at the stirups".
A second reported that the dilapidated houses in Virginia "look like the latter end of original sin and hard times".
A third remarked of slowness of Southerners: "they moved about from corner to corner, as uneasy as a litter of hungry leaches on the neck of a wooden god".
Still another, annoyed by the brevity of a recently received missive, wrote: "yore letter was short and sweet, jist like a roasted maget".
A Yankee sergeant gave the following description of his sweetheart: "my girl is none of your one-horse girls.
She is a regular stub and twister, double geered.
She is well-educated and refined, all wildcat and fur, and Union from the muzzle to the crupper".
Humor found many modes of expression.
A Texan wrote to a male companion at home: "what has become of Halda and Laura?
When you see them again give them my love -- not best respects now, but love by God".
William R. Stillwell, an admirable Georgian whose delightful correspondence is preserved in the Georgia Department of Archives and History, liked to tease his wife in his letters.
After he had been away from home about a year he wrote: "(dear Wife) if I did not write and receive letters from you I believe that I would forgit that I was married.
I don't feel much like a maryed man but I never forgit it sofar as to court enny other lady but if I should you must forgive me as I am so forgitful".
A Yank, disturbed by his increasing corpulence, wrote: "I am growing so fat I am a burden 2 myself".
Another Yank parodied the familiar bedtime prayer: "now I lay me down to sleep, the gray-backs o'er my body creep;
if they should bite before I wake, I pray the Lord their jaws to break".
Charles Thiot, a splendid Georgia soldier, differed from most of his comrades in the ranks in that he was the owner of a large plantation, well-educated, and nearly fifty years of age.
But he was very much like his associates in his hatred of camp routine.
Near the end of his service he wrote that when the war was over he was going to buy two pups, name one of them "Fall-in" and the other "Close-up", and then shoot them both, "and that will be the end of Fall-in and Close-up".
The soldiers who comprised the rank and file of the Civil War armies were an earthy people.
They talked and wrote much about the elemental functions of the body.
One of the most common of camp maladies was diarrhoea.
Men of more delicate sensibilities referred to this condition as "looseness of the bowels";
but a much more common designation was "the sh-ts".
A Michigan soldier stationed in Georgia wrote in 1864::
"I expect to be tough as a knott as soon as I get over the Georgia Shitts".
Johnny Rebs from the deep South who were plagued with diarrhoea after transfer to the Virginia front often informed their families that they were suffering from the "the Virginia quickstep".
A Georgia soldier gave his wife the following description of the cause and consequence of diarrhoea: "I have bin a little sick with diorah two or three days.
I eat too much eggs and poark.
It sowered (on) my stomack and turn loose on me".
A Michigan soldier wrote his brother: "I am well at present with the exception I have got the Dyerear and I hope thease few lines find you the same".
The letters which poured forth from camps were usually written under adverse circumstances.
Save for brief periods in garrison or winter quarters, soldiers rarely enjoyed the luxury of a writing desk or table.
Most of the letters were written in the hubbub of camp, on stumps, pieces of bark, drum heads, or the knee.
In the South, after the first year of the war, paper and ink were very poor.
Scarcity of paper caused many Southerners to adopt the practice of cross-writing, i.e., after writing from left to right of the page in the usual manner, they gave the sheet a half turn and wrote from end to end across the lines previously written.
Sometimes soldiers wrote letters while bullets were whizzing about their heads.
A Yank writing from Vicksburg, May 28, 1863, stated: "not less than 50 balls have passed over me since I commenced writing.
I could tell you of plenty narrow escapes, but we take no notice of them now".
A Reb stationed near Petersburg informed his mother: "I need not tell you that I dodge pretty often for you can see that very plainly by the blots in this letter.
Just count each blot a dodge and add in a few for I don't dodge every time".
Another Reb writing under similar circumstances before Atlanta reported: "the Yankees keep shooting so I am afraid they will knock over my ink, so I will close".

3,
the most common type of letter was that of soldier husbands to their wives.
But fathers often addressed communications to their small children;
and these, full of homely advice, are among the most human and revealing of Civil War letters.
Rebs who owned slaves occasionally would include in their letters admonitions or greetings to members of the Negro community.
Occasionally they would write to the slaves.
Early in the war it was not uncommon for planters' sons to retain in camp Negro "body servants" to perform the menial chores such as cooking, foraging, cleaning the quarters, shining shoes, and laundering clothes.
Sometimes these servants wrote or dictated for enclosure with the letters of their soldier-masters messages to their relatives and to members of their owners' families.
Unmarried soldiers carried on correspondence with sweethearts at home.
Owing to the restrained usages characteristic of 19th-century America, these letters usually were stereotyped and revealed little depth of feeling.
Occasionally gay young blades would write vividly to boon companions at home about their amorous exploits in Richmond, Petersburg, Washington, or Nashville.
But these comments are hardly printable.
An Alabama soldier whose feminine associations were of the more admirable type wrote boastfully of his achievements among the Virginia belles: "they thout I was a saint.
I told them some sweet lies and they believed it all.
I would tell them I got a letter from home stating that five of my Negroes had runaway and ten of Pappy's.
But I wold say I recond he did not mind it for he had a plenty more left and then they would lean to me like a sore eyd kitten to a basin of milk".
Some of the letters were pungently expressive.
An Ohio soldier who, from a comrade just returned from leave, received an unfavorable comment on the conduct of his sister, took pen in hand and delivered himself thus: "dear Sis.
Alf sed he heard that you and Hardy was a runing together all the time and he though he wod gust quit having any thing mor to doo with you for he thought it was no more yuse.
I think you made a dam good chouise to turn off as nise a feler as Alf Dyer and let that orney thefin, drunkard, damed card playing sun of a bich com to sea you, the god damed theaf and lop yeard pigen tode helion, he is too orney for hel.
I will shute him as shore as I sea him".

Initiation into combat sometimes elicited from soldier correspondents choice comments about their experiences and reactions.
A Federal infantryman wrote to his father shortly after his first skirmish in Virginia: "dear Pa.
Went out a skouting yesterday.
We got to one house where there were five secessionists.
They brok & run and Arch holored out to shoot the ornery suns of biches and we all let go at them.
Thay may say what they please but godamit Pa it is fun".

Some of the choicest remarks made by soldiers in their letters were in disparagement of unpopular officers.
A Mississippi soldier wrote: "our General Reub Davis is a vain, stuck-up, illiterate ass".
An Alabamian wrote: "Col. Henry is (an ignoramus) fit for nothing higher than the cultivation of corn".
A Floridian stated that his officers were "not fit to tote guts to a bear".
On December 9, 1862, Sergeant Edwin H. Fay, an unusual Louisianan who held A.B. and M.A. degrees from Harvard University and who before the war was headmaster of a private school for boys in Louisiana, wrote his wife: "I saw Pemberton and he is the most insignificant puke I ever saw.
His head cannot contain enough sense to command a regiment, much less a corps.
Jackson runs first and his Cavalry are well drilled to follow their leader.
He is not worth shucks.
But he is a West Point graduate and therefore must be born to command".

Similar comments about officers are to be found in the letters of Northern soldiers.
A Massachusetts soldier, who seems to have been a Civil War version of Bill Mauldin, wrote: "the officers consider themselves as made of a different material from the low fellows in the ranks.
They get all the glory and most of the pay and don't earn ten cents apiece on the average, the drunken rascals".
Private George Gray Hunter of Pennsylvania wrote: "I am well convinced in my own mind that had it not been for officers this war would have ended long ago".
Another Yankee became so disgusted as to state: "I wish to God one half of our officers were knocked in the head by slinging them against (the other half)".

No group of officers came in for more spirited denunciation than the doctors.
One Federal soldier wrote: "the docters is no aconte -- hell will be filde with do(c)ters and offersey when this war is over".
Shortly after the beginning of Sherman's Georgia campaign, an ailing Yank wrote his homefolk: "the surgeon insisted on sending me to the hospital for treatment.
I insisted on takeing the field and prevailed -- thinking that I had better die by rebel bullets than (by) Union quackery".

The attitudes which the Rebs and Yanks took toward each other were very much the same and ranged over the same gamut of feeling, from friendliness to extreme hatred.
The Rebs were, to a Massachusetts corporal, "fighting madmen or not men at all but whiskey & gunpowder put into a human frame".
A Pennsylvania soldier wrote that "they were the hardest looking set of men that ever I saw.
They looked as if they had been fed on vinegar and shavings."
Private Jenkins Lloyd Jones of the Wisconsin Light Artillery wrote in his diary: "I strolled among the Alabamans on the right, found some of the greenest specimens of humanity I think in the universe, their ignorance being little less than the slave they despise with as imperfect a dialect.
They recooned as how you'uns all would be a heap wus to we'uns all'".
In a similar vein, but writing from the opposite side, Thomas Taylor, a private in the 6th Alabama Volunteers, in a letter to his wife, stated: "you know that my heart is with you but I never could have been satisfied to have staid at home when my country is invaded by a thievin foe, by a set of cowardly skunks whose motto is Booty.