Title: Elijah Douglass Fox to Walt Whitman, 9 December 1863
Date: December 9, 1863
Whitman Archive ID: loc.00600
Source: Charles E. Feinberg Collection of the Papers of Walt Whitman, 1839–1919, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. The transcription presented here is derived from Drum Beats: Walt Whitman's Civil War Boy Lovers, ed. Charley Shively (San Francisco, California: Gay Sunshine Press, 1989), 145. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the correspondence, see our statement of editorial policy.
Contributors to digital file: Elizabeth Lorang, Kathryn Kruger, and Nick Krauter
. . . Since coming here I1 have often thought of what you told me when I said to you I am certain I will come back to Washington. you said to me then that a gret many of the boys had said the same but none had returned. I am sorry it is so but after I had thought it over I concluded it would be better for me to go into some business that would be a periminent thing.
1. Elijah Douglass Fox was a Union soldier in the Third Infantry Wisconsin. At the time of his enlistment in May 1861, he resided in Buena Vista, Wisconsin. According to the "Notebook: September–October, 1863" (Charles E. Feinberg Collection), Fox was brought to Armory Square Hospital on September 26, 1863; it was here where he met Walt Whitman. He was discharged from the Union army on November 10, 1863, due to disability. [back]