Type: Exhibition caption
Detail: For the ordinary soldier, army life entailed much tedium and discomfort interspersed with moments of sheer terror. In this January 1862 letter, Aaron Van Fleet of Clover Hill, New Jersey, a private in the Twenty-third Pennsylvania Volunteers, complains to his brother of cold, irregularity of pay, and illness in the camp. In spite of limited educational opportunities, most New Jersey soldiers were literate. Van Fleet perished at Spotsylvania in 1864.We got paid today so I will send yo this money….We did not get paid all…Snow here now and quite cold…There is a good many living here now with the fiever 5 died in one week from our Camp I would like to be home Now for a while….I hope I will be home next winter….