Letter, 7 Nov. 1863, of Union soldier George E. Cooper, a member of the 127th New York Infantry, was written from Coles Island [near James Island in Charleston County, S.C.] to Peter Tallman, Spring Valley, Rockland County, N.Y., a discharged member of the regiment, and provides comments on the plight of a Northern soldier suffering with chronic diarrhea in an inhospitable climate. Cooper had suffered with the malady since the first of August and writes of the "bad unhealthey climate" with brackish water that oozes through the sand and "has a bad taste and smell." So bad was the water, he notes, that "those in the hospittle are not alowed to drink it" and instead "get it distilled by steam on the boats that lay here in around the islands." Sgt. Daniel S. Velsor, the letter reports, was suffering from the same complaint and another officer had been stricken with typhoid fever. In a postscript, Cooper expresses hope that the troops would soon be able to "come home and see you and spend our bounty and vote down Cop[p]e[r]heads" for "that is the only way to get them down."
