Fairfax Station, Virginia March 6th, 1863

Dear Parents,

March with its uncertainties and fickleness is upon us, and is flying rapidly away. One day it is balmy warm and spring like, and the next is cold and stormy, and only a day or two ago we had a good smart thunder shower. Quite Spring fashion, isn't it? I have been engaged in the captain's office all the week until yesterday, and I guess there is no more to do there now. Adelbert Bartlett stayed here with us last night. He looks hale and hearty and tough. He is going back to the 12th today. His company is stationed down 1/4 mile from the rest of the regiment at a ford on Occoquan River, with the 2nd Connecticut Battery

You have no doubt read the Resolutions passed by the 16th some time since and we have the response, offering to take care of the Copperheads at home, and tendering us their sympathies, and promising the Vermont Volunteer regiments to keep their ranks full, if need be at the point of the bayonet. All very well in its place, but it seems to us that instead of their sympathies, we shall nave themselves out here before long. Won't the order for a draft make a sensation among some of these self-same sympathizing patriots such as were so anxious to avoid it last Fall?

The box you mentioned Aunt M. sending to Uncle Joseph has not yet arrived, or at least had not a day or two ago. They do not bring the express boxes up here from Alexandria every day, but wait until they get a lot of them, and so bring them up altogether.

Saturday, March 7th: Again we have an illustration of the fickleness of March, for it commenced raining last night, and has rained moderately ever since, so there is no particular likelihood of our having a drill this morning. Uncle Joseph got his box yesterday, and was much rejoiced there at. Everything came through in good shape, even the half bushel of crackers you sent him. I guess you think him quite an invalid. True, he is not well, but still he is not so sick as to need a cracker diet entirely. I imagine that his bag of meal will be of infinitely more service than his crackers. Norman Taylor had a box yesterday, containing among other things a paper of salt. His good friends no doubt thought that, as he was down in Dixie, he must be as short of that useful article as though he was in Richmond itself in the hands of the Rebs. Uncle Joe is disposed to divide his treasure with me, but I do not feel like taking them, at least not so freely as they are offered, as I know that Aunt M probably paid the express.

The company turned out at least fifty men for dress parade last night, besides the usual details for guard and fatigue duty, the cooks and the sick. The orders in camp now are that no man shall be out after taps at 8 p.m. But last night the guards picked up three of the officers of the regiment, one captain and two lieutenants, and marched them up to the guard house. One of the guards was from our company, and he said they looked crestfallen enough; and the officer of the guard was a lieutenant at whose expense the other officers have had a great deal of sport. Even he laughed over it all fight, and told the boys that it was worth five dollars to him.

All is quiet and still just now, with nothing to relieve the monotony of camp life except an occasional rumor of moving, which probably has no foundation except in the minds of the circulators. The greatest excitement we have had lately was over a piece in the paper from Adjutant General Washburn saying that our time would be out in nine months from the time we were mustered in. Some of them were inclined to believe it would not be out sooner. H G D

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Contributed by Linda M. Welch, Dartmouth College, Windsor County researcher.

Return to the Index of Hezron's letters..

See also Hezron's biography, and his memoir of the Gettysburg Campaign.