Today brings news
of a terrible battle — but no particulars; only that General Frank Paxton is
killed; Jackson and A. P. Hill wounded. Of the mothers in this town, almost all
of them have sons in this battle; not one lays her head on her pillow this
night, sure that her sons are not slain. This suspense must be awful. Mrs.
Estill has four sons there; Mrs. Moore two; Mrs. Graham three, and so on. Yet
not a word of special news, except that a copy of General Lee's telegram came,
saying, a decided victory, but at great cost. God pity the tortured hearts that
will pant through this night! And the agony of the poor wife who has heard that
her husband is really killed! I was told to-night that a few weeks ago General
Paxton wrote to his wife, sending his will, with minute directions in regard to
his property; telling her that he had made a profession of religion; that he
was expecting to be killed in the next battle, and was resigned and willing to
die.
My brother John is
a surgeon in the Federal army; it is routed, we hear; so I don't know what may
be his fate; nor can I know. I pray God he may be safe. The Northern people
can't conceive the horrors of this war. It is far away from them; their
private soldiers are all from the lower classes — persons with whom the masses
of Christian and cultivated people feel no tie in common; while the mass of
Southern private soldiers are from the educated classes; this makes a woeful
difference in the suffering a battle entails: not that these Dutch and Irish and
uneducated people have no friends to mourn for them — But oh! the
sickness of soul with which almost every household in this town awaits the
tidings to-morrow may bring!
SOURCE: Elizabeth Preston Allan, The Life and Letters of
Margaret Junkin Preston, p. 163
