Brevoort Place, August 8th, 1861.<\/p>\n
Your response to my patriotic fervors gave me a sort of chill. We did not seem en rapport<\/em>. . . . We<\/em> are heartily ready to record our faith that the war is worth what it may cost, although the end may be only\u2013only!<\/em> the preservation of the Government, and not, just now, the liberation of the slaves. Perhaps you hold, with Mr. Phillips and Abby (I believe they comprise the entire party) that the war is not justifiable if it \u201cmeans only stars and stripes.\u201d We think, or to resume the perpendicular pronoun, I think that is enough for it to mean or seem to mean at present. \u201cThe mills of the Gods grind slow,\u201d you know, or, if you will let me requote to you your own quotation, \u201cyou cannot hurry God.\u201d Don\u2019t you and Mr. Phillips want to hurry Him a little? I would rather, for my part, think with Mrs. Stowe, that the question of the existence of free society covers that other question, and that this war is Eternally Righteous even if it \u201cmeans only the stars and stripes.\u201d .. . We are all getting bravely over the two or three dreadful days of a fortnight ago, and coming to think that our retreat under the circumstances was not such a bad thing after all. . . . Monday after Bull Run was a frightful day in Washington. Georgy says a thick gloom oppressed them which the knowledge of the safety of those nearest them could not lighten in the least, and that a sad procession of the wounded was passing through the streets all day under the heavy rain. . . . Many of the men are but slightly wounded, and all are perfectly patient, cheerful and only eager for \u201canother chance.\u201d \u201cTell her about the wound in my hand preventing me from writing,\u201d one man said, for whom Georgy was writing home. \u201cAnd the wound in your leg?\u201d G. asked. \u201cNo, never mind about that.\u201d \u201cAnd I shall say you fought bravely?\u201d \u201cOh, no matter about that; she\u2019d be sure of that.\u201d They have known two or three cases of Southern barbarity to our wounded. But the poor wretches expected the same thing at our hands. Dr. Bacon, an intimate friend who has just come home with his regiment, Connecticut 2nd, says in the battle on Sunday he came upon a piece of shade in which four or five wounded Georgians were lying, and what was very painful to him, every man believed that he had come to kill them, lying there disabled. One young fellow called out, \u201cDon\u2019t hurt me, I\u2019m hurt enough already,\u201d and the rest made a feeble show of defending themselves. Of course he dressed their wounds, and did what he could for them with more than usual care and gentleness, and I can bear witness how careful and gentle that must have been, but it was hard to tell which emotion was uppermost with them, gratitude or astonishment. Mr. Maclise, of the 71st, which has come home, says he found a wounded man under a tree, a Carolinian, he thinks, who begged for his life in the same way. \u201cBless your soul,\u201d Maclise said, \u201cI wouldn\u2019t hurt you for the world; don\u2019t you want some water?\u201d The poor fellow eagerly took the water from his enemy\u2019s canteen. \u201cIf I only had a cup I could give you some brandy,\u201d Mr. M. added. \u201cOh, just look in my knapsack and you\u2019ll find a cup.\u201d So Maclise opened the knapsack, took out a beautiful silver cup, mixed the draught, and made his patient as comfortable as he knew how, bringing home the silver cup, at the Carolinian\u2019s most urgent entreaty, as a souvenir of that sad day. He will try and return it one of these days. But what a blackness of darkness, of falsehood and misrepresentation lies behind all this. These perfectly intelligent men devoutly believed that we would kill them, unarmed, sick and helpless! . . . The \u201cprevailing\u201d Prince comes and goes, and nobody seems to care much about it. We have learned something, or it is that we have too many troubles of our own to care for the pleasures of princes. He overstayed his time at Mount Vernon the other day, and there was a splendid story that he had been captured, but he spoiled the bulletins and the joke by coming back to a soiree at two o\u2019clock at night. . . . We are going, as much for duty as pleasure, to Lenox, to-morrow or Saturday, for a few weeks, to refresh ourselves for the winter. As long as McClellan keeps quiet we shall stay. He resigned one day last week. Col. Davies dined with us yesterday and told us so, from his uncle, General Mansfield, who had seen the letter. The administration attempted some interference in his reforms, and he sent in his resignation. It was immediately hushed up, refused, of course, and he was allowed to have his way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Brevoort Place, August 8th, 1861. Your response to my patriotic fervors gave me a sort of chill. We did not seem en rapport. . . . We are heartily ready to record our faith that the war is worth what it may cost, although the end may be only\u2013only! the preservation of the Government, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":69113,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1996","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-letters-of-a-family-during-the-war-for-the-union"},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/www.cw-chronicles.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/Jane-Stewart-Woolsey.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.cw-chronicles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1996","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.cw-chronicles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.cw-chronicles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.cw-chronicles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.cw-chronicles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1996"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.cw-chronicles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1996\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.cw-chronicles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69113"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.cw-chronicles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1996"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.cw-chronicles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1996"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.cw-chronicles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1996"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}