Camp Near Fairfax Station,
December 22, 1862.
As my first
announcement, I will tell you that Hogan is all right with the exception of
being paroled. He arrived at camp last Friday, having been kept by the
guerrillas three days. The terms of his parole are so strict that I asked him
very few questions. He told me that one of the scamps appropriated my overcoat,
and that another rode off on my mare the morning after her capture. He managed
to save some of my letters which were in my coat pocket. I felt that it was
dangerous for him to stay with us; so Saturday morning I sent him off to a
parole camp, with all the good advice I could think of and five dollars in
money. He will write to me of his whereabouts, and I shall endeavor to get him
a furlough. We are still lying here, in a miserable state of uncertainty about
our future movements; no officers' tents, nothing, in fact, to make us
comfortable.
It has been very
cold for the last two or three days and nights. You would be amused to see us,
sitting around a fire trying to eat our breakfast or dinner before it freezes
hard; dippers of water soon become iced, and yesterday we enjoyed the luxury of
frozen buttered toast and frozen sardines. In washing, our hair becomes a solid
mass before it can be brushed or combed. We have one comfort, that is, that we
sleep warm at night.
SOURCE: Charles
Fessenden Morse, Letters Written During the Civil War, 1861-1865,
p. 114-5
