It is a modified version of the Ohio Star - the new part being the little split squares in the corners. Mine are made of the red and gold floral and the aqua triangles. I liked the way this block looked with the framing effect of a large stripe and used all I had of this one to do it. These blocks are 12 inches.
Shep with the 52nd wrote to his sisters Joanna and Carrie on the 17th of January and tells them "we have just received orders to be in readiness to start day after tomorrow. We are going down the river sure enough." He speculated they would be seeing more of the "sunny south" - though not by choice.
Billy wrote to his brother Henry from Chattanooga on January 23rd, 1864. He is happy to report "The cars coming to town caused great excitement and of course, I, like any other little boy, have been looking at, and riding on them every day since they commenced running here." He is living in a little house near the big depot as he has been all winter. He jokes, "I heard that the Rebs were advancing on Chattanooga again, and sure enough, they are, for they are daily and hourly coming in and taking the oath." He reports 4-12 and sometimes 25 of them. He talked to some that day and wonders "if our men were deserting and going to the Reb lines as fast as they are to ours, I should think that we were played out." They finally have plenty to eat and he is very glad that they stayed there and held what they gained, "... instead of falling back on our supplies, we held our gain and let the supplies come to us."
Billy jokes about having had his photo taken, thinking he would send it to some girl next month for a Valentine, but "I don't know who there is that I would wish to boar so dam bad as that. If I had an enemy that I wanted to spite, I would do as above stated." He concludes asking Henry to speak a good word for me to the girls back home. "We very frequently see young ladies when we are outside the lines, but there is not half of them that know putty. They still say Pemberton can still hold Vicksburg as long as he wants and that Bragg is coming back here to whip us before long. We ask them why he didn't whip us while he was in his fortifications at Talahoma, "Wal you'uns ware a gitt in behaind him."
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| Federal Encampment at Chattanooga, 1864, from the Library of Congress collection |
Two days later, in a letter to Joanna, Billy says, "... as for slavery, I didn't come out to fight for nor against it, I came out to fight Rebels and traitors to there country. It is the Rebels themselves that are destroying slavery and a great many of the deserters from their army say that slavery is dead anyhow and it will not make the war any longer one way or another. Well, I have seen enough of this cursed institution with my own eyes."
In a letter to his brother Charlie on the 31st of January, talking about reenlisting (the men of the 82nd are not yet eligible as they are still serving their original commitment) Billy says "I will finish my term and go home and let somebody else fight awhile. If I can't get a furlough without paying for it, I will not have one at all. You spoke of men all going to the gold territory. Well, I hope, by jing, that the Indians will surround every one of them and about two-thrids starve them. Then, I guess, they would know how soldering goes."
2 comments:
Your use of the striped fabric really gives your block great impact. Although I don't personally care (in general) for the Civil War era reproduction fabrics I freely admit that the striped fabrics are fabulous and can give wonderful effect when used creatively like you have done. Nicely done.
Nicely done!
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