Van Wagenen, William, 1842-1866 to Cornelia

One letter from William Van Wagenen to his sister Cornelia dated May 20, 1864. William describes his activites as a U.S. Christian Commission Aget. He particularly describes the horrors of war writing, "Since I have been here I have been very busy. I was assigned to a hospital in the Methodist Ch[urch]. Here every Ch. & almost every house is filled with the wounded. I have not been around the town at all because I have had more than enough to do at my hospital. There is one other delegate besides myself here, a Princeton Seminary friend. Two ladies & seven or eight gov't nurses & two doctors & one or two sanitary delegates constitute our corps of assistants. There are about two hundred wounded there. "In the morning I dress wounds & feed them. In the afternoon write letters & in the evening talk & p(reach] to them. I have already several PETS (underlined in original] among my 'boys.' One is a boy of 18 who has lost his right arm & is so wounded in his left arm that he cannot use it for a year. Another boy of about 17 has lost one arm & is now doing well." "There have been a great many amputations- some of whom will die. One of my 'boys' (aged about 30) is to have his foot taken off tomorrow and I expect to assist. I got up my appetite for breakfast this morning by assisting at the amputation of a hand." "Several hundred wounded have just come in & will have to be attended to. "This morning I officiated at my first funeral, in one of the grave yards in town. Last night three of my men died & tonight one is just dying & perhaps more will die also. I have talked to most of them & had a very profitable time. "There are about 11,000 wounded in the city & many passed through every day. I have been used to seeing all kinds of wounds but as I have some scratches on my hands cannot dress wounds very much for fear of being poisoned. My nervousness is pretty well over. My health is firstrate ..." "Guerillas are all around the town & everyday attack some soldiers. There are not many troops here. They say that there are not more than 100 people left in town. This morning 40 men were sent to Washington as hostages for those wounded when the Mayor sent on to Richmond when the battle just begun. We can hear the cannonading here plainly ...Yours, Willie."