I have a friend, Thomas Neat, 2d N.Y. Cavalry,
wounded in leg, now home in Jamaica, on furlough; he will probably
call. Then possibly a Mr. Haskell, or some of his folks, from western
New York: he had a son died here, and I was with the boy a good deal.
The old man and his wife have written me and ask'd me my Brooklyn
address; he said he had children in New York, and was occasionally
down there. (When I come home I will show you some of the letters I
get from mothers, sisters, fathers, &c. They will make you cry.)
How the time passes away! To think it is over a year since I left
home suddenly--and have mostly been down in front since. The year has
vanish'd swiftly, and oh, what scenes I have witness'd during that
time! And the war is not settled yet; and one does not see anything
certain, or even promising, of a settlement. But I do not lose the
solid feeling, in myself, that the Union triumph is assured, whether
it be sooner or whether it be later, or whatever roundabout way we
may be led there; and I find I don't change that conviction from any
reverses we meet, nor delays, nor blunders. One realizes here in
Washington the great labors, even the negative ones, of Lincoln; that
it is a big thing to have just kept the United States from being
thrown down and having its throat cut. I have not waver'd or had any
doubt of the issue, since Gettysburg.
_8th September, '63_.--Here, now, is a specimen army hospital case:
Lorenzo Strong, Co. A, 9th United States Cavalry, shot by a shell last
Sunday; right leg amputated on the field.
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