The following letter was written by John Adams DeWandelaer (1833-1891) who served in Co. B, 153rd New York Infantry. He was mustered in as a 1st Lieutenant on 1 September 1862 and was promoted to Captain on 1 May 1863. He was wounded in the shoulder at the Battle of Winchester, and since the ball was never extracted, it gave him difficulty the remainder of his life.

John was born in Fonda, the son of Gansevoort DeWandelaer and Delia Getman. He was married to Nancy Coppernoll.

T R A N S C R I P T I O N

Alexandria [Virginia]
November 1st 1862

Dear Father & Mother, Sister & Brother,

I suppose you have been looking for a line for some time but we was so busy first along that I had no time and then I was taken with a dreadful cold all through my bones and I have been quite sick all week and I went down to the City to sleep and they charged me 1 dollar a night for lodging alone so you see that the money goes very easy here. Butter is selling here now for from 32 cents to 38 cents per pound and cheese is selling from 16 to 20 cents per pound. So you see it costs a great deal to live here, I have got a very nice little tent about as large as two of them you saw in Fonda, only it has straight sides. They are called wall tents. The officers all have this kind. I have a floor in it and a little sheet iron cook stove and I board myself when I am well and then it does not cost so much but it goes kinder tough. We are lying just outside of Alexandria by the railroad that leads to Richmond. My tent is not 30 feet from the track.

The railroad belongs to the government and they take a load of darkeys up in the morning to work for the government and bring them back at night. You can get lots of darkeys to work for their board here but they look pretty tough and everything looks hard around here. You cannot see a sight of a fence no where and a great many buildings are either half or whole torn down and everything looks like destruction. You can see the terrors of war here in all its horrors. You hardly see anything but army wagons and we see hundreds of them every day. They (the wagons) are very heavy and strong and they have from 4 to 8 horses or mules before one wagon and then they fill it with bread or meat or beans and then go to their respective camps. You may judge how many there are when I tell you how the streets of Alexandria are all cut full of ruts right through the stone pavement.

They are very strict here now. No man can pass in or out of the City without a pass and that is looked at very close. The City is full of secesh but they dare not open their heads. We expect to help guard the City this winter but are not certain of it yet. The order may be changed any day. We would like to go to New Bern, North Carolina, if we can bring it about, but our Colonel is quite sick now with the pleurisy and that will set us back very much. Everyone in the regiment likes our Colonel but the Lieut. Colonel is not liked at all and that makes it very unpleasant just now. But it will all be right when our Colonel is well again.

Our men are all armed and equipped. They have the Austrian rifle. As near as I can find out, there is now at last 400,000 Union soldiers between the Potomac and Richmond and they are expecting the decisive battle every day. All the regiments are under marching orders but us that lay around us. We can see 14 camps and two forts from our camp and we have a full view of the Potomac. We see a sloop burn on it the other morning. The names of the forts are Lion & Fort Ellsworth. I have been all through the latter fort and everything is as neat and clean as a pin and they have guns there as large as a small saw logs and they say they will shoot five miles. We can see the dome of the [U. S.] Capitol from our camp and we are only seven miles from Washington.