A surgeon in one of the military hospitals at Alexandria, writes in a private note:

“Our wounded men bear their sufferings nobly; I have hardly heard a word of complaint from one of them. A soldier from the ’stern and rock-bound coast’ of Maine–a victim of the slaughter at Fredericksburg–lay in this hospital, his life ebbing away from a fatal wound. He had a father, brothers, sisters, a wife, a little boy of two or three years of age, on whom his heart seemed set. Half an hour before he ceased to breathe, I stood by his side, holding his hand. He was in the full exercise of his intellectual faculties, and was aware that he had but a very brief time to live. He was asked if he had any message to leave for his dear ones at home, whom he loved so well. ‘Tell them,’ said he, ‘how I died–they know how I lived!’”

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