Autograph letter signed by Ed Haughton, 2nd Maine Cavalry, to friend Charley. Braskier [Brashear] City, [Louisiana], 15 June 1864. 4 pages, 8vo. With original envelope with New Orleans stamp and red 3-cent postage stamp.

"...you must let the girls alone..."

An interesting soldier's letter with explicit details of sex workers and sexually transmitted infections.The author is Edward B. Houghton, a private in Company F of the 2nd Maine Cavalry. Houghton enlisted at the end of 1863 and writes home to his friend from their early attachment in the District of La Fourche in the Department of the Gulf.

Houghton opens his letter by sharing the poor fate of a mutual friend: "Charley Hawes says that he has got the clap so that he is most dead but I guess that he will live a while longer yet, but you must be steady and let the girls alone, for they are bad things to handle." He closes the letter with an admonishment from Hawes: "Charles Hawes sends his love to you and says that you must let the girls alone, as you will get as bad off as he is."

Hawes would succumb to his infection, dying in New Orleans 2 months later.

The letter continues with a description of the prostitutes who came to their camp: "There is any quantity of N----r wenches here, but we don't see a white girl out here [but] once a month, and what there is look as black as a stove funnel, but there was some quite good looking ones down to New Orleans, but we are about 90 miles from there and have got right amongst the Rebs."

Not limited to sexual updates, Haughton also informs his friend: "We shot one fellow right through his cock and stone one of his balls out. I am glad that I am not a Reb if that is the way that they use them."

Letters written from soldiers to their friends are incredibly valuable as they provide information and details, sometimes sexual, that is self-censored from letters back home to mothers, wives, and other women.

[Civil War, Union, Confederate, Sex History, Sex Workers, Prostitutes, Letters, Manuscripts, Ephemera]