Sunday, March 2, 2014

Major General George Gordon Meade to John Sergeant Meade, December 31, 1862

CAMP OPPOSITE FREDERICKSBURG, December 31, 1862.

Your kind letter, dated Christmas, was received yesterday, and I am very much obliged to you for your affectionate remembrance of me. You say truly, we have a great deal to be thankful for, and when we consider the distress and mourning that is around us, our hearts ought to be filled with gratitude for the mercy that has been extended.

John1 is very much pleased at George's2 being here, and takes great interest in all that relates to him. George has taken a great fancy to a little black mare I have, belonging to the Government, which he has given me various hints he thought I might buy and present to him, and in this little scheme to diminish my finances to the tune of one hundred and twenty dollars, he has the hearty co-operation of Master John, who regularly informs me every morning he thinks the boy ought to have the black mare.

I have sent George's name to the President for appointment as one of my aides, with the rank of captain.

To-day is my wedding and birthday. To-day I enter on the forty-seventh year of my life and the twenty-third of my wedded existence. I had hoped to spend this day with your dear mother and my darling children, but my promotion to the Fifth Corps and the number of generals that have been sent to testify before the Porter and McDowell courts have prevented my getting away. Should it be decided the army is to go into winter quarters, I may yet have a chance, though I hardly have much hope.
__________

1 General Meade's body-servant.
2 Son of General Meade.

SOURCE: George Meade, The Life and Letters of George Gordon Meade, Vol. 1, p. 343-4

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