Yesterday, while we sat at dinner, who should step into the
dining room but Frank Preston! Poor fellow! it was a piteous thing to see him
with but one arm; but what a relief to see him again, and have him safe, when
we were mourning him as perhaps ill and carried to Fort Delaware! He looks
right well, though he had to endure the pain of a second amputation, which was
done by the Federal surgeons, from whom he says he received skilful treatment
and true kindness. They would not parole him, so a lady who lives outside the
pickets, about eight or ten miles from Winchester, came in and took him to her
house in her carriage, no one challenging them: there he remained two days;
when two other sick prisoners, whom she had sent her carriage for in the same
way, were seized and taken back. As soon as this was known to her, she sent
Frank on in her own carriage, immediately, twenty miles (after night), lest he
too should be sent for: and so he escaped. He was confined to bed several weeks
with his wound. Two or three hours before Frank came, Willy P. started to join
his company, the Liberty Hall Volunteers; so the brothers just missed each
other.
SOURCE: Elizabeth Preston Allan, The Life and
Letters of Margaret Junkin Preston, p. 145-6
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