Every thing seems unchanging in the outer world during the
few past days. We were most delightfully surprised last night. While sitting
quietly in the Colonel's room, (in the basement,) the window was suddenly
thrown up, and in sprang our son J., just returned from Northern captivity.
Finding that we had changed our quarters since he was here, he walked up the
street in search of us, and while stopping to ascertain the right house, he
espied us through the half-open window shutter, and was too impatient for the
preliminaries of ringing a bell and waiting for a servant to open the door. He
was in exuberant spirits, but much disappointed that his wife was not with us.
So, after a short sojourn and a cup of tea, he went off to join her on “Union
Hill.” They both dined with us to-day. His confinement has not been so bad as
we feared, from the treatment which many other prisoners had received, but it
was disagreeable enough. He was among the surgeons in Winchester in charge of
the sick and wounded; and when we retreated before Sheridan after the battle of
the 19th of August, it fell to his lot, among eighteen or twenty other
surgeons, to be left there to take care of our captured wounded. When those
duties were at an end, instead of sending them under flag of truce to our own
army, they were taken first to the old Capitol, where they remained ten days,
thence to Fort Delaware, for one night, and thence to Fort Hamilton, near
Fortress Monroe, where they were detained four weeks. They there met with much
kindness from Southern ladies, and also from a Federal officer, Captain Blake.
SOURCE: Judith W. McGuire, Diary of a Southern
Refugee, During the War, p. 330-1
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