Oct. 29, 1862

Dear Parents

I have a few moments of leisure and propose to improve it. We marched through Baltimore from depot to depot over the same ground where the Mass. 6th passed. Baltimore looked dark and silent. There was only now and then a Union sympathizer to greet us, and at one place a big Union flag suspended across the street. From Baltimore to Washington the distance is forty miles and we were eight hours on the road and a more comfortless ride it is seldom any person's lot to enjoy. Our cars were leaky and dirty and for a considerable portion of the time we never saw it rain harder, but all things have an end and so did that ride, and we finally found ourselves in the suburbs of far-famed Washington.

Our first view of Washington was far from prepossessing for we had only seen the outskirts of the city, and that sight verified the expression of Lawyer Fullum that there was nothing to be seen in Washington except niggers and speckled pigs, and we didn't see anything else worth mentioning except the meanest yellowest, nastiest, and greasiest mud you ever saw.

We understand that the five regiments of Vermonters that went for nine months are to be formed into a brigade to go together. We went over to the 13th and took supper on Monday night and to the 12th and got our breakfast on Tuesday morning, because we had not got fairly arranged for housekeeping and so were invited over there. I saw Hudson and Bartlett there. We have got tents and the most of camp conveniences now. The weather here in the middle of the day is like a warm September day in Vermont while the nights are as cold as they are in Vermont at the end of October. The first morning after our arrival there was the merest scale of ice in a mud puddle on our campground, but the nigs called it an uncommonly cold night for the country. It was cold enough at any rate to take hold of us pretty severely, so much so that some of the boys got up and built them some bonfires out of an old rail or two, a cedar post, and some old roofing paper that we found on the ground, and by that means managed to keep comfortable.

Our campground is but a little way from the city on what is called Capitol Hill in full sight of, and I should guess some half mile from the dome of the Capitol. Abe's house is some two miles off. the pickets of the 12th yesterday captured six rebel prisoners down near Long Bridge and the 13th captured another rebel spy only a day or two ago. I cannot stop to write more now. The boys are all in very good health and spirits. Yours, Hezron G. Day P.S. Direct [your letters to] Co. "C", 16th Regt, Vermont Volunteers Washington D.C.

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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.