Camp near Tuscumbia, Alabama, July 22, 1862

I believe the barrel of clothes I sent to St. Peter will go the same way as with the flat boat between St. Peter and St. Louis. It will arrive in 1863 if it don't rot on the way.

We are now on guard duty once a week, which means forty men on guard duty day and night to guard the citrus orchards, apple orchards, gardens, cornfields, bee hives, chickens and eggs, so that we shall not get any of it.

The soldiers guard these things and the owners sell to the soldiers, pie at forty cents each, eggs thirty cents a dozen, chickens one dollar, butter thirty cents, milk twenty-five cents a quart. Such treatment is not satisfactory to us soldiers.

We are laying around here waiting for orders to march again.

We thought yesterday that we would be leaving here today so a large fire was started, a large barn was reduced to ashes, wheat and rye-stacks and other things went up in smoke. We had horses in the barn, they were let out to roam.

The field officers had their tents four rods from the barn, we moved their tents in a hurry.

The 35th and 9th Ohio regiment came to help but not much could be done.

The owner found his barn in ashes, his chicken coop was saved but the chickens were gone. The fruit trees today are still standing, but the fruit is gone, the garden is there, but bare.

There were such a lot of bee-hives there, but we were not able to take them all before the bugle call was “fall in line”. This was ten o’clock last night. Today here is honey, chicken meat, and such things among the soldiers.

We eat a lot of blackberries now, of which there are a lot. We can easily pick a quart in thirty minutes, and then we buy sugar for twenty-five cents a pound, so we eat blackberries and crackers.

If we have to stay here the two years we have left then each soldier will need a new set of teeth, which will be an unexpected tax for Minnesota.

A captain is in arrest in Louisville for giving the Rebels news.

Governor A. Ramsey visited us a short time ago.

The 3rd Minnesota regiment are now prisoners near Nashville.

Recruiting officers will soon be sent to Minnesota again from the 2nd Minnesota regiment. I don’t know yet who it will be.