In the door-yard, towards the
river, are fresh graves, mostly of officers, their names on pieces of
arrel-staves or broken boards, stuck in the dirt. (Most of these bodies
were subsequently taken up and transported north to their friends.) The
large mansion is quite crowded upstairs and down, everything impromptu,
no system, all bad enough, but I have no doubt the best that can be done;
all the wounds pretty bad, some frightful, the men in their old clothes,
unclean and bloody. Some of the wounded are rebel soldiers and officers,
prisoners. One, a Mississippian, a captain, hit badly in leg, I talk'd
with some time; he ask'd me for papers, which I gave him. (I saw him
three months afterward in Washington, with his leg amputated, doing well.)
I went through the rooms, downstairs and up. Some of the men were dying.
I had nothing to give at that visit, but wrote a few letters to folks home,
mothers, &c. Also talk'd to three or four, who seem'd most susceptible to
it, and needing it.
AFTER FIRST FREDERICKSBURG
_December 23 to 31_.--The results of the late battle are exhibited
everywhere about here in thousands of cases, (hundreds die every day,)
in the camp, brigade, and division hospitals. These are merely tents,
and sometimes very poor ones, the wounded lying on the ground, lucky
if their blankets are spread on layers of pine or hemlock twigs, or
small leaves. No cots; seldom even a mattress. It is pretty cold. The
ground is frozen hard, and there is occasional snow.
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