Transcription
On the 13th of December [1862] God blessed us with a great victory at Fredericksburg. Upwards of eighteen thousand of the enemy were killed. We lost but one thousand. Even the Yankees acknowledge it to be a great defeat.
The battle took place in and around the town the streets were strewn with the fallen enemy, the houses were broken open, sacked and used for hospitals and their dead were buried in almost every yard.
Dr. Nichols was there—came as an amateur with his friend Gen' Hooker—he occupied Uncle John's house (where his wife has been most hospitably entertained for weeks at a time) drank up Uncle J's wine, used his flour and ate up Ellen Mercer's preserves.
...delicacy, and so cold blooded and heartless as to come—not at the stern call of duty, but for the love of it—to gloat over the desolated homes of people he once called friends, and who are relations and connections of his wife's.
