“Wilson Small,” May 14.
Dear Friend, — Last evening we parted from all our poor fellows, except Captain Curtis, the extensive hero, who is said to-day to have a chance for life. Our men were put on board the “Elm City,” which has been detailed to the Commission. She filled up this morning with four hundred and forty patients, and sailed for Washington. Mrs. George Strong takes charge of the women’s department, and Miss Whetten goes with her. I was sent on board this morning to assist them, and remained there till the boat sailed. The “Elm City” is a large river-steamboat, with wide spaces on all her decks, where badly wounded men can be laid in rows on cots and mattresses, — they could not be put in bunks or berths. She cannot make a sea-passage, and is therefore sent up the Potomac to Washington.
It is an immense piece of work to get the patients (many of them very low, or in great agony) on board and into their .beds, and stimulated and fed and made comfortable. So much is needed, — quick eyes and ears, and, above all, some one to keep severe order in the pantry, or rather the kitchen for the sick-food. Mrs. Griffin is magnificent at that. I never saw her hurried or worried for a moment; consequently she saves time and temper, and does the very best that can be done. She spent this morning on the “Elm City” watching over three men until they died, receiving their last wishes, which she is now writing to their wives.
You will get little public information from me. I am told we went some way up the Pamunky River yesterday. Mr. Olmsted landed, and went over the Williamsburg battle-field with incredible difficulty and jolting. It is two and a half miles long, with the fences all broken down. The enemy are expected to make a desperate stand at Bottom Bridge — wherever that may be. The army is now making its way along the banks of the Pamunky; great regret is felt that General McDowell was not allowed to co-operate at Gloucester. The spirit of our men, their confidence in their leaders, their pride in belonging to McClellan and the Army of the Potomac, is splendid, so far as I see it; and everybody says the same. Many fine traits of character come out,—such as their self-forgetfulness and tenderness in caring for sick comrades, their endurance of suffering, and even contempt for it. A poor little boy of seventeen, shot through the lungs, was so unwilling to speak of himself, never murmuring, but roused into excitement on the arrival of the New York papers with accounts of the battles. I began to read to him about the battle of Williamsburg, where he was wounded; but he gurgled out: “Not that! I know all about that. What did our boys do next?”
The fire we saw on our way across the Chesapeake was the burning of the Navy-yard at Norfolk, and the dull explosion which we heard was the blowing up of the “Merrimac.”
