Boston, November 29, 1861.
My Dear Motley:
I know you will let me begin with my personal story, for you have heard before
this time about Ball's Bluff and its disasters, and among them that my boy came
in for his honorable wounds. Wendell's experience was pretty well for a
youngster of twenty. He was standing in front of his men when a spent ball
struck him in the stomach and knocked him flat, taking his wind out of him at
the same time. He made shift to crawl off a little, the colonel, at whose side
he was standing, telling him to go to the rear. Presently he began to come
right, and found he was not seriously injured. By the help of a sergeant he got
up, and went to the front again. He had hardly been there two or three minutes
when he was struck by a second ball, knocked down, and carried off. His shirt
was torn from him, and he was found to be shot through the heart — it was
supposed through the lungs. The ball had entered exactly over the heart on the
left side and come out on the right side, where it was found—a Minie ball. The
surgeon thought he was mortally wounded, and he supposed so, too. Next day
better; next after that, wrote me a letter. Had no bad symptoms, and it became
evident that the ball had passed outside the cavities containing the heart and
lungs. He got on to Philadelphia, where he stayed a week, and a fortnight ago
yesterday I brought him to Boston on a bed in the cars. He is now thriving
well, able to walk, but has a considerable open wound, which, if the bone has
to exfoliate, will keep him from camp for many weeks at the least. A most
narrow escape from instant death! Wendell is a great pet in his character of
young hero with wounds in the heart, and receives visits en grand seigneur. I
envy my white Othello, with a semicircle of young Desdemonas about him
listening to the often-told story which they will have over again.
You know how well all our boys behaved. In fact, the defeat
at Ball's Bluff, disgraceful as it was to the planners of the stupid sacrifice,
is one as much to be remembered and to be proud of as that of Bunker Hill. They
did all that men could be expected to do, and the courage and energy of some of
the young captains saved a large number of men by getting them across the river
a few at a time, at the imminent risk on their own part of being captured or
shot while crossing.
I can tell you nothing, I fear, of public matters that you
do not know already. How often I thought of your account of the great Armada
when our own naval expedition was off, and we were hearing news from all along
the coast of the greatest gale which had blown for years! It seemed a fatality,
and the fears we felt were unutterable. Imagine what delight it was when we
heard that the expedition had weathered the gale and met with entire success in
its most important object.
SOURCE: George William Curtis, editor, The
Correspondence of John Lothrop Motley in Two Volumes, Library Edition,
Volume 2, p. 216-8
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