On October 29, 1861, the men of the 47th Pennsylvania Veteran Volunteer Infantry Regiment were in a picket line near Vienna, VA. Captain J. P. S. Gobin's Company C was assigned to picket duty near a farm house owned by a man named Stewart. Stewart was married to the sister of James Jackson - the hotel owner who killed Colonel Elmer Ellsworth in Alexandria, VA at the start of the war a few months earlier.
Stewart was a quartermaster in the Confederate Army. Mrs. Stewart had been arrested and sent to Washington, D.C. after she was caught passing information to Confederate spies.
Gobin went through the house and found a note addressed to Mrs. Stewart from two Confederate cavalry officers. the note stated, "Mrs. Stewart: Please accept our most hearty thanks for the nice breakfast we have partaken of, and of the kindness manifested to Southern soldiers. May your sorrows be dreams, and your joys bright realities. Your Friends, J. R. Rambo and J. B. Edmundson. Sept. 10, 1861"
Captain Gobin reported, "This was written on the back of an envelope directed to James Rambo, 1st Regiment Virginia Cavalry, in care of Capt. W. E. Jones, of the Washington Mounted Rifles... We found several slaves and two small children at Stewart's, who are all in a state of want, and dependent upon our army for their daily subsistence."
Copyright 1999-2011: Jay C. Richards
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