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To his wife Sarah, Harpersfield, Ohio: “…The officers of the Regt. are sending in their resignations almost every day…most of them want to get out of the service so as to go into something to make money out of faster. They think they are not making money as fast as they might at home…Privates going into the Army now are getting considerable more wages than the officers …Tennesseans have to vote on the amendments to the state Constitution today. This amendment abolishes slavery which would be a fitting deed for the day. There is no doubt but what the amendment will be adopted by an almost unanimous vote as most loyal men are tired of the institution…My faith is strong that the war will end next summer if not before. Sherman seems to have his own way in South Carolina…[I]… will cut the Rebs all up into mince meat if they come within range of my toad sticker…” Atkin was an Ohio farmer who enlisted in the Army as a Sergeant in 1863, and unlike many Union soldiers, was sympathetic to ex-slaves he encountered in the South. As he correctly predicted, on the day he wrote this letter, voters in the former Confederate state of Tennessee, then largely under Union control, overwhelmingly approved a new state constitution which immediately abolished slavery.