Richard Cary, the first of Edwin’s friends to enlist, had been killed back in early August and the letter informing Edwin has been waiting here these weeks. Richard was shot in the leg at the Battle of Cedar Mountain. The wound was not instantly fatal, but his men were unable to transport him to the field hospital before he bled out. The letter is from his sister, who also writes that an unfinished letter to Edwin was found in his pocket. Richard Cary was twenty-six years old, two years younger than Edwin.

Edwin feels the whirlwind rise around him, the deafening sound of his own blood. “Mollie,” he says, dropping the blade and groping towards her. She puts her arms around him, rocking and petting him, and he cries without restraint or control, slightly embarrassed when he straightens up to see that he’s left the bodice of her dress soaked with suds and tears.

Edwin will never experience a loss free from guilt. He remembers the letters he’d written to Richard, which seem now egotistical, as if Richard, facing one battle after another, could possibly be interested in the advancement of Edwin’s career. He writes a letter of condolence to Richard’s wife and then, having sent it, immediately writes another. But what, really, can be said?

A second letter is also in the pile, this one from Adam Badeau, all about the horrors of the Battle of Antietam. At first this seems strange—Adam is still in Louisiana and nowhere near Maryland. But James Harrison Wilson was there. Adam has fallen in love. “I can tell no one but you, dear Ned,” he writes. By God’s grace, Wilson is not among the twenty-three thousand dead.

Edwin, newly sensitive to the danger Adam is in, writes back that he’s praying for the God of Battles to spare his Ad. He consults with Julia Ward Howe as to what he can do for the war effort and she proposes charity performances, the proceeds going to medical supplies or to the Union’s indigent widows and orphans. He does several of these.

He can’t seem to go to sleep at night and he can’t wake up in the morning. Mary often brings Edwina, freshly bathed, to do the deed, so his day can begin with the pressure of her tiny hands, levering herself up and over the rumpled bedclothes, up and over his body. He opens his eyes and she’s inches away, staring intently into them, her sparse hair haloing her head. When she sees him looking back, she grabs for his nose. She smells of milk and powder. He holds her, kicking and laughing above his head. It’s so easy to make her happy. It’s all he wants to do.

Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation