Autograph letter signed by M.G. Miller Farm, [Pennsylvania], 13 October 1865. 8vo, 4 pages. With original envelope with Miller Farm cancel and red 3-cent stamp. 

A truly remarkable and unusually explicit letter written by a recent veteran only months after the close of the Civil War. Addressed to a friend in Erie County, New York, the writer, "M.G.," shares news of work, wages, and his postwar plans before turning to subjects rarely recorded so candidly in period correspondence.

He opens innocently with practical remarks about employment, noting: “there is plenty of carpenter work to be done just now + if you were here at the present time you would get work enough but I don’t know how long the demand for carpenters will last.” He continues: “I shall stay here but intend to stay as long as I can get $4 a day or until pretty late in the fall and then go to St. Louis and spend the winter.”

The letter then shifts to lamentations over drink and companionship: “I am glad you took a glass of beer for me while at Buffalo for I can get none for myself here...I ain’t had no fucking in about six months and I am almost dying for the want of it what is your fix in that respect if you get a good chance take a good old fuck for me to[o].” He even reflects on marriage, adding, “I think I will take your advise and get married and then I will have all the fucking I want I guess cannot tell you how long.”

He concludes his letter with a proposition for his friend that is risque even by modern standards: "I see that Congress is going to give us soldiers some land and when I find where mine is I will get married and settle down and I want you to come and settle close side of me and you sleep with my wife and I will with yours."

Letters this sexually explicit are virtually unknown in Civil War correspondence. A rare survival that documents the unfiltered voice of a soldier’s postwar life.

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