Atlanta
Oct 26th /64
Dear Wife
I will try and write a fiew lines this evening in answer to yours of the 14th. I am glad to hear you are all enjoying good health. I havent got rid of my cold yet. I have the worst cold I have had in a good while. Knight before last I thought I would loose my speech entirely. I am verry hoarse yet but am better than I was. I have ben up and about all the time but was quite sick yesterday and day before. Our brigade has gone on another forageing expetition. They started this morning five oclock. They will be away five days. The doctor thought I had better not go so I am in camp. Our Lieut Colonel commands our brigade on the exebition. Col Barnum is sick. This is the fourth exebition and from three to five hundred wagon loads each time. I think they went beyond Stone Mountain. We went west of Stone Mountain the other time. I am afraid they will have a bad time. It is cloudy and looks verry much like rain. I am glad I dident have to go this time. Laying on the ground in the wet I would taken more cold and perhaps ben real sick. The chaplain got back yesterday and John Travis. John seas he see you and the children. I ask him how large they are and lots of questions but he is so quier I couldent find out much. He seas I have got quite a boy. He seas he looks like me. I wish I could see him and judge for myself. You say he begins to talk and the first word he spoke was pa. It dont seam posible that he is big enough to talk or walk. I will find a big boy instead of a little baby which I alwais immagend I would. Our recruits are driving cattle from Chattanooga. They will be here in a fiew days. The chaplain says they are a real lot of copperheads. They will change their minds after they have soldierited a year and gone through a good long campaign and a fiew sharp fights and the abuse they will get from the old soldiers if they dont turn Union. Them we got last spring were all about the same but they all voted for Lincoln. Two weaks from to day the great battle will be fought north. I look for a great Union victory the reelection of Lincoln. I dont see what principles the man has that votes for Mac. The man that votes for Little Mac fights as hard against the Union as we do for it. He is a trator and should be made to put on the suit of gray and then we would know what to do with them. There is not one soldier that will vote for him but some roudies that dont care for themselves nor nothing if they can onely get out of a fight. They know the south will soone have everything in their own hands and that there wont be eney more fighting. We want an honorable peace and a lasting one and Lincoln is the man to do it. A man now has got to be for the Union or against it and I think whoever goes for Little Mac goes against the Union if they go by the Chicago platform. I must close for the want of room. Write often. Dont wory about me. I will soone get well. It is nothing but a cold. My love to you. Good buy.
Charles Engle