No 27  Rossville, Ill. May 11th 1864  Wednesday 1, o'clock P.M.  My Dear Husband, This is a beautiful May day and looks more lovely in contrast with yesterday, which was a very cold, cloudy one, but I am sorry to say that I am neither physically or mentally able to enjoy the day for I am quite unwell today, and consequently fell a little low spirited.  I didn't get a letter from you last week and that perhaps accounts in part for the "blues", but tomorrow is mail day again and hope to get a letter then, and I will regain my usual health in a few days, and "I'll forget that yesterday I was sad".  I see by the Chicago Tribune that the evacuation of Texas by our forces began May 2nd, so perhaps you are in New Orleans, or farther up the Mississippi; I must not expect that you can serve your country and lie idly in camp all the while, but I had hoped that you might stay there this summer.  O! I do pray you may never fall into such hands as perpetuated the Ft Pillow massacre; retaliation is justice to them surely.  That fiendish act has capped the climax for the rebellion we will bring a reckoning most fearful.  But the day of deliverance and peace is hastening, already Gen Grant has opened the contest on the Rhapahanock; and we look forward with hope that as Abraham Lincoln's first term of office expires, the din of civil war will cease forever, that this will indeed be the "Land of noble, brave and free.  But here we sadden as the imagination look into the future, for
