Chesapeake Hospital
Fort Monroe, Virginia
July 26, 1865

Dear Wife,

It is so long since I have received a letter from you that I have almost got homesick–not so much for the want of getting home as for the want of news from you for your last letter that I got told me that you was sick. Therefore I feel worried about you and long to hear from you. It is now over three weeks since I have got any news from home. If you have sent any letter to the company, they have not been good enough to send them to me. But i have sent for all of the mail that there is there for me. I am glad that I have been sick a little on account of their not giving me a furlough when you was sick for they have been deprived of my services over a month now and if I could of got ome, they would of had me in the company now on duty for I hurt myself by working when I had no business to lift my hand to do anything for I am not paid to work now. But for looking on and having the work done for Gen. Abbott says that he will break any of his non-commissioned officers that does any kind of work while on fatigue. So you see that I can’t earn twenty dollars a month any easier than I can out here. And I would not ask for a discharge or a furlough if I only knew how you are getting along for as I said before, I feel worried about my pet.

I must tell you that we are under Petticoat Government in this hospital for a woman is in charge of it and she runs it tip top. ¹ You had ought to see her make the nurses stand around so we get the best kind of care—not like that at the Point of Rocks for there if a man had a fever and got out of his head, they would tie him down on the bed so that he could not get up for they was too lazy to watch a sick man. Two of the men died while they were tied in their beds and the nurses didn’t know when they died.

There is a boy here that was very sick and when I got so that I could sit up, I have heard him call for a drink till he could not speak and they would not stir to get him one. But after a while, his father come in to the hospital to take care of him and now he is getting well. If his father had not come on, he would of been dead now. He is a Connecticut man.

There is a man here in the north wing of this ward with his leg off and his wife is out here taking care of him. I mention this for he, like me, got married and then went into the army and now he has only one leg. She is about your age and he is about mine. She don’t appear to take it hard for she laughs and says that she can work for him now that he has got crippled trying to work for her.

I will now stop for the church bell is ringing and I am a going to the meeting. Give my love to all, pet. You might please write soon. Your husband, — CHester A. Chapman

Co. D, 1st Conn. Artillery, 6th Ward, Chesapeake Hospital, Fort Monroe, Va.

¹ Possibly Mary A. E. Keen. She was transferred to Chesapeake Hospital in Old Point Comfort, Virginia, in November 1864 and served until sometime in July 1865. See: https://guides.loc.gov/civil-war-soldiers/mary-ann-keen