Camp Winder, March 31, 1863.
You will have, in your troubles on the farm, much to try your patience. My advice to you is to bear it all in good temper, to know all that is going on; and by devoting your mind to it you will find that you succeed much better than you anticipate. There is no work so profitable in one’s business as thinking about it. I have always found that when I was interested in what I had on hand, and thought much about it, that I found some good and easy plan of accomplishing what I wanted to do. I have, as you know, short as my life has been, followed all sorts of trades. I have been lawyer, banker, farmer, soldier, etc., and any success which I have met with I ascribe to the thinking which I have devoted to the business. You, I doubt not, have found the same about your housekeeping. Now apply this to the farm, and you will have an easy time.
Whilst I value your love as the best treasure which I have on earth, I would not have you harass yourself with a painful anxiety about my fate. The thread by which I hold my life is brittle, indeed, and may be severed any day. I have thought much of it, and think that I feel content to accept whatever fate God’s justice and mercy has in store for me; and my prayer is that he will give me such faith, repentance and conformity to the law of his holy Gospel as is required of the sinner. I feel that I can say, “If it be possible, let this cup pass from me; but thy will be done.” Sooner or later I must drink it, and if it be God’s will that it be now, I am content. Sooner or later I must die, and, if prepared to die, my life can never be given to such a cause as that in which it is now staked. I may survive the dangers before me; many thousands will. If such be the will of God, I trust that his law may be the guide in what remains for me of life. Sooner or later, darling, the ties which bind me to you and the children of our home must be severed forever. If I be the first to go, and the charge devolve upon you, teach them, as the experience of their father’s life, that there is no honor on this earth save in the path which God’s Word points out for the humble and contrite Christian. Outside of this there is no success in life, no wealth or distinction which does not bring wretchedness as the reward for the labor which it costs. Perhaps there may be many years of happiness in store for us, dark and bloody as the future may seem. May God in his mercy end the struggle!