“How bad I do feel because I can’t get home, but I feel worse when I got your letter saying you had cried every letter you wrote”

Camp Convalescent VA

Sunday July 26, 1863

Dear Clarinda,

Feeling somewhat lonesome today, I cannot do any better than write a few lines to you. I am well and hope these few lines will find you and the children the same. I got a letter from Mally today with her likeness. Most all the boys are going crazy over her good looks. I have answered it and will send it with this one. I will also send you a Harper’s Weekly. I thought you might think more of it if I sent it, if I bought it, than if you had got it yourself.

We have been mustered for two months pay and will get paid sometime this week and I will send it to you the same as I did before. I cannot pay it before for I don’t know the price of carrying it by express.

How bad I do feel because I can’t get home, but I feel worse when I got your letter saying you had cried every letter you wrote. Dear Clara, it was too bad, but if anything of that kind happens I wish to know it for I wish to share your sorrows likewise. Whatever may befall or beset you, I know of one fond loving heart that will never cease to beat for you and you alone while life remains. I can’t express by words how deeply I love you, and the longer I am away the stronger grows that love for you. To part with you now, I think it would about kill me. You know last summer when you was gone only a month, how long it seemed to me and how dearly I prized your worth when you came home. I hope that we may live together again and live happily.

I have not got a letter yet from George, but may get one tomorrow. I can’t tell how long it will be before we are exchanged, perhaps sometime next month. When I am in the service 25 days longer I will be one year in the service of Uncle Sam. God grant that I may not pass another one here.

There is not much news here to write but what you hear through the papers. So give my love to all the folks and take good care of yourself and little ones for my sake, and hoping to hear from you soon, I remain,

Your true and loving husband until death,

Sergt. Peter L. Dumont

Co. A, 146 Regt

NY Vols