Captain Curtis of the 16th, who had been a patient on board our Headquarters boat the “Small,” since his wound at West Point, went up in one of the transports to an Alexandria hospital. He found there our friend Chaplain Hopkins, still hard at work among the sick and wounded. The following letter from the chaplain is inserted to show the success of our effort to have hospital chaplains appointed by the government. Mr. Hopkins received his commission and was under military orders from this time.
Alexandria, June 3d, 1862.
My dear Mrs. Howland: As you may have noticed, the bill for hospital chaplains has become a law. . . .
After several ineffectual attempts to see the President, I at last gained access to him yesterday, to ask the appointment of a hospital chaplain in my place, and found his excellency in a most genial frame of mind. He was fairly exuberant; told funny stories! volunteered the remark that he “was afraid that fellow Jackson had got away after all,” etc., etc. He told me that he had that very day appointed a man to help me – Bowman, he believed. “A very good man, isn’t he?” Mr. B. had been condoling with him on the loss of his son Willy. My application he seemed to be most favorably impressed with, endorsed what I had to say on the back of it with his own hand, rang for Mr. Nicolay, and – I say it with pain, but not without hope – had it filed away.
The moment Richmond is taken I shall apply to be removed there, and shall hope to join you and Miss Woolsey in many an excursion into the to-be historic environs. How you ladies can preserve calmness and elasticity of spirit I do not understand, but I know that you do.