Camp Parole Va

Sunday Sept 20^th 1863

[letterhead with two color pictures: soldier with drum and flag and War Department building, Chas Magnus, 12 Frankfort St. N.Y.]

“Dear Clara

to day has been another long tedious Cold & lonesome Sunday it has been so Cold here to day it was impossible to keep warm but for all that I am enjoying good health and hope you are all enjoying the same good health & now Dear Clara I suppose I will have to inform you of the news that we are all exchanged & will have to go to our Regts & just about now they are getting all ready for a big fight again out in front”. Has been busy for a couple days getting more clothing and “there has about 18 hundred guns Come to this Camp which they say are for us the Officers that is over me here in Command told me this morning that Lee thought we were all Exchanged this what I write to you is mostly imagination but I think it will prove to [missing “be’?] true.” Says if he had had a chance to have come home he thinks would have gone back to the front cheerfully and willingly but he hopes all will turn out well so don’t despair and keep spirits up. He would die if he didn’t think the war would soon end, perhaps over the winter so they can come home in the spring. “Fletch don’t want to go to the Regt any more than what I do But I guess he will have to go with [missing word?] although they want him to the hospital so much he makes so good a nurce [sic].” He gave Peter a present of a nice woolen shirt. The Regt just got paid off so he won’t get paid and will have to wait for another payday before he can send her money. He hopes she doesn’t suffer for anything as long as she has the means of getting it.

“Dear Clara my dream of seeing you this year has vanished I am afraid but still I have hope of seeing you sometime. I think your last letter was a good one and oh how I do prize those little misels [sic] that come from you if I could not hear from you then I would be sad indeed I never thought before I was married that I could love one so much as I do you I would rather loose [sic] all the riches of the land than you Dear one & yet we must be parted but I feel it cannot be so forever.” Closing.