December 18th.
Our headquarters are
now about twelve miles below Fredericksburg, near the house of Mr. Richard
Corbin, which is one of the most beautiful buildings I have seen in this
country. It is said to have cost sixty thousand dollars. Night before last I
was about to spend the night in the woods, but sent to ask if we could procure
our supper at the house. Mr. Corbin was absent, serving as a private in the
Virginia cavalry, but Mrs. Corbin bountifully supplied us, and requested me to
spend the night at her house, which invitation was thankfully accepted, and I
had a delightful night's rest. The next morning she urged me to remain, and
offered me a neat building in the yard for my office, but I declined, and am
now about five hundred yards from the house, encamped in the woods. She told me
that if at any time I needed house room, she could let me have it.1
Baby's letters are
read with great interest, and it does her father's heart great good to read
them. . . . I have much work before me,
and to-day I expect to commence in earnest. The reports of the battles of
McDowell, Winchester, Port Republic, Richmond, Manassas, the Maryland campaign,
Harper's Ferry, and Fredericksburg have all yet to be written. But something
has been done towards several of them by my staff.
_______________
1 He afterwards moved into the office in the
yard, and spent most of the time he was in winter-quarters there.
SOURCE: Mary Anna
Jackson, Life and Letters of General Thomas J. Jackson (Stonewall
Jackson), p. 386-7
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