Gen. Luck writes home after a disasterous start to the campaign

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Dearest Abigail, I was most pleased to receive your latest dispatch. It saddens me that the cholera has claimed uncle Ezekiel. What he thought he would find in the Nebraska territories beyond his own mortality escapes me. Perhaps the lure of a sod house offered its own reward. I should say that at this moment in our current campaign, a shanty on the Platte would be most preferable.

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Our spring reinforcements have done little to help the cause, though I am not certain it is entirely their fault. We've been given a poor lot for protection. Try as they might, effort can only elevate a man so far beyond his natural station, and we have been incessantly besieged. My shoulders ache and my knees howl with every maneuver. F. Gore, a rather experienced volunteer from Miami who replaced the layabout from Alabama we had been saddled with, can find no purchase as each advance is repelled by a swarm of angry resistance or, worse still, our own incompetence.

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