Abby Howland Woolsey to H. Gilman.
Brattleboro, September.
We have had our first letters from the girls at Point Lookout, and everything promises pleasantly. The only grievance is the chaplain, whose face is “as hard as a wooden chair,” and who looks as if he had fought through life, inch by inch. He is fanatically Episcopal, though his sermons were practical and good, and he has the melodeon (paid for by general subscription) picked up and carried off and locked in his own room after every Sunday service, that it may not be used at the Methodist prayer meetings which the men choose to have! Georgy says they have grand good singing, whether or no, without it. . . . There is a little of almost every phase of the war there, except the actual fighting. They have the prisoner’s camp, the New Hampshire brigade to guard it, with their splendid drill, dress parades, officers’ wives, hops, etc. There are the hospitals for each, the General Hospital, and lastly the large Contraband camp. Jane’s first letter was long and interesting, as she was much at leisure, but we do not expect to hear at great length hereafter. . . . Charley, always at Headquarters Army of the Potomac, writes us to-night that they have sent off two corps to West Tennessee, and that he thinks the ultimate use of the balance will be within the defences of Washington. Is not Rosecrans’ crushing defeat a sad blow? . . .
