Item No. 2878940

This letter was written by Hamilton McClurg, who was then serving in Nashville as a hospital steward in the 102nd Ohio Infantry. Writing to Maria Gertrude Liggett from a Nashville hosptial, McClurg discusses the aftermath of the Battle of Nashville.

He opens the letter describing his recent fifteen-day furlough. “It took me 4 days to go home and the same number to return in,” he writes. “So you see over half was taken up in travel.” He then discusses the situation after General George H. Thomas’s victory over General John Bell Hood’s confederates at the Battle of Nashville:

I was on the battlefield during the sanguine engagement between Thomas and Hood. A grand affair, but a great many bold men got hurt in the engagement. Hood is now making for the Tennessee River with all haste and Thomas following close in his rear…. The 112 Ohio is at Stevenson Ala, all right but cut off from Nashville. I am going down as soon as the road is opened.

Though undated, the letter was written in late December 1864—after the Battle of Nashville of December 15-16 and before Hood retreated across the Tennessee River on December 25.

McClurg mustered out with the 102nd in June 1865, but died just two years later in 1867. The transcripts of seveal McClurg letters, including this one, can be read at the Spared and Shared website.

The letter was written on three pages of a 5” x 8” letter sheet. Creased at the original mailing folds. The full transcript appears below.

Gen. Hospital No. 8
Nashville Tn.

Friend Gertie
I have not heard from you for a long while. This make the third time I have written to you. And since that time I have been at my home in Ohio. Oh! glad would I have been to have went down and have seen you, but business called on me to go another way, to Spring Mountain for instance, a place I know nothing about and know no one there except Dr. Winslow, and I guess he will not want to see me very bad. I told Jimmy in Nashville that I would come down, but under the circumstances it was impossible, as my furlough was but for fifteen days, and it took me 4 days to go home and the same number to return in. So you see over half was taken up in travel.

I was on the battlefield during the sanguine engagement between Thomas and Hood. A grand affair, but a great many bold men got hurt in the engagement. Hood is now making for the Tennessee River with all haste and Thomas following close in his rear. I will not trouble you with any more, but will now [close] hoping this may meet your approval and you will soon write. The 112 Ohio is at Stevenson Ala, all right but cut off from Nashville. I am going down as soon as the road is opened. Write once, will you Gertie?
Direct 102nd O.V.I.
Via Nashville Tenn

Goodbye
H. McClurg