811. BATTLE OF BATON ROUGE AND LAKE PONTCHARTRAIN A good pair of war-date Union musician's letters totaling, 4pp. 4to., written by musician John W. Day 14th Maine Vols. concerning the battle of Baton Rouge and of being encamped on now famous Lake Pontchartrain, Louisiana. In part: "...[Carrolton, La., Aug. 25, 1862]...we left B[aton] R[ouge] the 20th and come down here. We are now 6 miles above New Orleans. We got aboard the boat Friday morning...we have had to work hard and sleep little since the fight...the day after we left B.R. the Rebels come in and pitched their tents as big as could be and our 2 gun boats run up and went to playing into them and killed a great many of them before they could get out of their way. The gunboats shelled them out and burned the city all down...[Corp.] John Clements is doing well [Clements was MWIA at Baton Rouge and died 10/22/62]. I heard from his yesterday...we have got to move tonight...when we come from B.R. we stopped about 3 miles above here. When we got our tents pitched it begun to rain...it rained all day and the next...the mud was ankle deep...we pitched our tents and got in...about dark. I was tired so I did not think about the mud...and went to sleep...[Camp Williams, La., Oct. 10, 1862]...William Allen was killed in the last Bull Run fight. I hope it is a false report...we have moved again into Gen. Sherman's brigade over near Lake Pontchartrain about 4 miles from New Orleans. We have got into a mostly wet hole. We have to drink swamp water and it smells...we have whisky twice a day on that account but I sell mine to one of our drummers for 5cts a ration and buy butter and tobacco with the money...a good many of our regt are sick...we have to beat the long roll most every night, but nothing has turned up very serious yet...". Day's phonetic spelling has been corrected. Minor soiling, else very good. $150-200