My Dear Uncle I wrote to the madame a few days ago

New Orleans
Aug 30th [18]64
My Dear Uncle
I wrote to the madame a few days ago telling her how John was getting along.  I think you will be pleased to hear that he is not in the Hospital[,] for if he was he would die of starvation and neglect.  You have no idea how they treat the poor deluded Yankees when they are sick; How would you like to have a tough piece of Bull Beef with a spoon full of mashed potatoes and a few grains of dried boiled rice for your dinner without any pepper or salt.  It makes my heart blead to go through the hospitals and see the skeletons laying on their little narrow beds holding out their pipe stem arms for a shake of the hand.  Men that have to go to stool ten or fifteen times a day whose breasts look like a wash board are treated like damd brutes.  I onely wish that some of the war stay at home abolition fire eaters could come out here South and see the suffering.  It is all pretty nice to pick up your morning paper and read of a fight and repulse of the enemy that is the bright side of war.  But if you want all the patriotism taken out of you just step into the Hospital where they don’t care a dam wether they live or die.  I brought down to the Hospital where Jonnie was sick; a large lot of Ale, and the cussis confiscated all[.]  the fact is the men in charge of the sick take all and sell the same and puts the money in his pocket.  You Yankee republicans can go on and send your young men down south to whip us but I think you will get tired of the same after a while[.]  Jonnie tells me that you are a rank black Republican.  I only wish you had the chance to get to this city.  I think you would change your mind.  I don’t see what prevents me from putting a little poison in your sons cup.  He is my enimy.  It is my duty to kill him[.]  I am a bigger traiter [traitor] than Jeff Davis[.]  I was one of the first that raised the stars and bars over this great state of Louisiana.  My dear Uncle if I thought that you would vote the Black Republican this fall I would just fix your boy so he would not be much ap for this war.  It makes me mad to think how I passed your farm house with (that infernal) Vary who never introduced me to you remember when you killed the muskrat. I sat in that wagon like a fool and he never said a word about going to the house, seeing you with the gun in your hand put me in a fiver [fever] for it looked so like home.  Oh how I like to hunt, and I mean to have a nice time up in the south woods.  This fall if I came north.  There is one thing that I want to tell you.  That is steer clear of B. H. Varry he is a mean cuss, keep this to yourself.   He is somean [so mean] the war why don’t he enlist.  Johnnie is at this moment spread out on my bed convalescent we have not given him any drugs or medicines.  It is lucky we got him or he would have been dead before this[,] the sanitary commission is a humbug.  They sell all the stuff and put the money in their pockets.  I am trying to get John out of the service[,] as it is he has an indefinite fulough and can stay in the city as long as he wants, he need not join his reg until he wants[.]  I have made him a rebel.  Expect you will see all hand this fall.  Vote the democrat ticket[,] yours truly
John