“We had no mails then, you know, my dears, and often months went on, and on, and brought no tidings to us, but what we learned from general rumor, or some chance straggler from the army. Then would come a letter from Edward, filled with all his former love, but giving no hope of his immediate return to us. Then came the project of besieging New York, and then volunteers would not do, nor new soldiers. The country demanded men who knew and could bear the fatigues of war. Oh! my children! you read and hear of the glory of war, and of the soldier who sweetly breathes his last for his country: true, the battle-field is terrible to think of, but there the groans are those of the dying, and humanity, shocked at her own barbarity, stanches the wounds, and tearfully holds the head that a few hours before she was frantic to lay in a bloody grave. But for the living death that many of our soldiers suffered before the war was over, there has been no such sympathy. The privation of clothing, of the commonest sort, the unshod feet, wearily and bleedingly marching over the snow, the shivering form, half covered by the tattered uniform, crouching over the fire in the wretched huts of the north, were scarcely less destructive than the withering heat, and wasting famine of the southern troops. Fortunately Edward did not go south until the winter, so that though he wrote of battle, he did not of sickness, and I hoped still. “When I next heard from him he was stationed at New London. You know that terrible story, my daughters. You know that Arnold, the wretch, whom to name is to execrate forever in American bosoms, ‘Arnold the traitor,’ was sent to besiege it. He had four times the number of men that were in the fort. He attacked it on three sides at once, and though our men fought like lions, it must have been in vain. They fought in full view of their homes, of all that was dear to them in the world. Judge if they did not fight. Judge if they did not pour out their blood like water, while there was any hope. But at last they gave way—they laid down their arms. And then—they were basely murdered as they stood! Such a massacre was not known elsewhere, thank Heaven! during our whole struggle. It is enough to make one shrink from all that bears the name of man.”