Title: William E. Vandemark to Walt Whitman, 25 December 1863
Date: December 25, 1863
Whitman Archive ID: nyp.00154
Source: Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature at the New York Public Library. 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), 207. 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, Tim Jackson, Vanessa Steinroetter, Kathryn Kruger, and Nick Krauter
Dear father
i1 now take the plesure of writing a few lines yo hoping they find yo well i am quite well and in the convalesent Camp i long to see yo and have a talk with yo thair hante inny news here we had a good dinner here to day
father yo must excuse me for not writing a long letter for my hand trembls so that i cant write well father write to me and if yo can come and see me good by for this time from Wm E Vandemark to friend Walt Whitman
i am in barick 43 Addres Camp Convalesint Elickazandry [Soldiers nicknamed Alexandria "Camp Misery".]
1. William E. Vandemark, a private in Company I of the 120th New York Infantry, was wounded at the Battle of Chancellorsville on May 3, 1863. Whitman noted that Vandemark was placed in bed 39Ward B at Armory Square Hospital, and Whitman may have written a letter to Vandemark's sister Sarah in Accord, New York (Edward F. Grier, ed., Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts [New York: New York University Press, 1984], 2:644). Vandemark returned home on furlough and was briefly transferred to the Veteran Reserve Corps during the summer of 1864 before returning to his regiment. He was killed on a skirmish line during the charge on Fort Davis at Petersburg, Virginia, on September 28, 1864. [back]