Abby Howland Woolsey’s Journal
New York, Monday.
Georgy’s letter of the 23d, written on the Spaulding from White House, came in this morning at breakfast, which is more prompt than usual. It tells of the proposed opening of hospital tents ashore, and two thousand sick ready to put into them at once. Why the Commission should have had to work long and perseveringly to accomplish this, I don’t know. . . . The accumulating number of sick is frightful, especially when we remember that hundreds probably die unknown on the roads, literally from starvation and exhaustion. . . . God’s curse, and not his blessing, is evidently on the whole country now, and will be while such pro-slavery policy as we have had is persisted in, and such burning sins as the Fugitive Slave Law gives rise to are perpetrated on the very Capitol steps at Washington.
Here is Banks, the embodiment of “success,” which is his motto, his command pursued and scattering; the Baltimore & Ohio road and the termini of those other important communications, all abandoned. Mobs in Baltimore, panic everywhere, and we just where we were more than a year ago; the 7th Regiment ordered off this afternoon for the defense of Washington. . . . Why, the war proper hasn’t so much as begun yet. . . .
Later :
Carry took Jane’s turn at Park Barracks yesterday afternoon. They have gone lately on alternate days, and as Carry is very chatty with the men and very communicative when she comes home, we hear a great deal of funny talk and pleasant incident. She helped get tea for them last night at 194. Smoked beef and boiled eggs, tea and toast and butter, all on little white plates, and each man served on a separate little tray at his bedside, if he was weak and in bed.