Daily Constitutionalist
Augusta, Georgia
May 29, 1861
We have been permitted to make the following extracts from a private letter, received in this city from a member of the Irish Volunteers:
Pensacola, Fla., May 21st, 1861.
My Dear Friend Mc: We are camped about one mile from this town. At the time that we arrived on the ground it was a perfect wilderness, so we all had to pitch in with shovels, axes and spades, and it was a caution to see how we made those bushes fly. We have now about fifty acres of land cleared.
The whole of the Fifth Regiment is here. Each company has its tents arranged in the form of a street, and they all run in the same direction. We went into the woods and cut down pine trees and evergreens, and have made beautiful arbors outside of our tents, so that under all the circumstances, we are as comfortable as we could expect.—There are five men in each tent. My messmates are Dennis O’Donohoe, Frenchy, Sergeant Fox and James McKeegan. They are all first rate fellows. I like Frenchy very much, a brother could not be more kind to me—we all pull together, and get along smoothly. It is the greatest advantage, in a place like this, to get in with some men that can understand each other. There is something to be done here all the time, between washing, cooking, marching, drilling, cleaning, scraping, and the dickens knows what. We get five days’ rations at a time. We get bacon, rice, sugar, coffee, beans, &c., in fact, we get a plenty to eat, but I can’t go the bacon. It is about a foot and a half thick, and if you were to stand on a side of this bacon, I believe you would go nearly to your knees in it. We have to make our own bread, but I am ahead of all the boys in that. If the ladies were to see some of those big fisted fellows putting their paws into a pan and striving to make a corn cake, I know how they would laugh; but then again they couldn’t help pitying them, or if they saw a lot of us trudging off to a little branch about a mile distant to wash our duds—and such washing! but no matter, we are all improving very fast, and if I live to go back to Augusta, I believe I will advertise for a situation as cook washer and—well, I have no experience in the ironing line, but some of the boys are talking about subscribing for an iron, and if they do, I’ll be in sure. I have been to Pensacola a few times; it is a quaint old fashioned looking town—something like Killarney. It is on the Gulf of Mexico, and has a fine harbor. Fish of all kinds are here in abundance. There are a great many French and Spanish in this place. There is also a Catholic church here.
We all marched to church on Sunday last, and heard a sermon in the French language, and some very good singing. The organ is of the same size and tone as the one in Augusta, but Mrs. Kavanaugh’s singing, in my estimation, is much better than any of the ladies that sung here on Sunday…