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Grant General Hospital Willette Point New York July 3 1864

Dear Wife

I will try this morning to pen you a few lines if I can to let you know where I am I was taken sick soon after I wrote you last with the direah which has run me down to a mear skeliton of a man I kept along with the regement untill two weeks ago when they left me in the wilderness on the James river in Va there I laid two days with nothing to eat nor no one to care for me so I crawled out to the river and hoisted a signal of distres and one of the government steam boats come and took me aboard and toated me round two or three days then put me aboard