Hillsborough
12 December 1860
Dearest Adah,
Friend, I hope you may forgive the tardiness of this letter. Duties here on The Hill pause not for sisterly affection. Father and my brothers are daily in the fields, from morning dark 'til the last gloaming. Hay must be gathered in and land plowed under, great mountains of winter firewood felled and corded, feed corn carefully laid-in. Their days may be full - but work waits always for the woman of the house! I have preserved 4 bushels of winter apples, and made another bushels worth of pies, which Cleo and I spend the afternoons distributing to the less fortunate families near Potts Hill. George has outgrown last year's coat, and Fairchild mangled his own on a fence-nail last week - thus my mending pile grows. My basket is full of wool to spin and weave into blankets and long-johns - Fairchild hints that I must procure a good pattern for a cavalry coat, but I wish he would keep his dark musings to himself. All this and gathering-in and cellaring the last harvest from my garden, and thus my pen and paper lie idle on my desk for weeks and days, waiting patiently for time to afford reverie. How I miss the slow idle summer days at White Oak House - nothing but yards of Boston silk and knots in my thread to distract me from your beloved company.
Yet, I cannot help but give thanks to God in small part for the unrelenting duties of our farm, for I fear familial relations between Mason and the rest have not improved. The neighbors keep their polite distance from the subject, so some of my prayers are answered, at least. But Mason continues to heap appellations of "Liberator" and "Preserver" on Mr. Lincoln, and Father gets his blood up and it is all Fairchild can do to preserve them from coming to blows. George, as you know, worships Father, and like the hot-head he is refused to even acknowledge Mason most days. The heat and flurry of our late-Autumn chores do little to warm the chill of sectionalism which plagues this house. Dearest Adah, most faithful and patient of all my childhood friends - forgive my frank disclosures of domestic discord. I know it is not decorous or proper to mention such unpleasantness in a letter, but I mention them only to beg you continue to lift up this family in prayer to the Almighty, who alone works the miracle of peace in the hearts of men.
We were in Winchester near the end of November for Thanksgiving at Aunt Nadia's, and heard your father's old friend, Mr. A.H.H. Boyd, preach at the Loudon Street Church. He was in good form, but his words made me mourn for my country and my state even more deeply than for my family. He spoke of the sectionalists in the North who have made the thought of Union hateful to their southern brethren - I remember his words very clearly: "What was considered our richest inheritance is now only the source of embittered feeling . . . to all human appearance nothing but divine interposition will avail to our deliverance from the apalling calamities that threaten us."
To that hope of Divine Mercy we must all now cling, and pray to Him who makes all men brothers for wisdom and temperance to govern the minds of those shortly attending the convention in Columbia. I will hold tight to hope and joy, though Fairchild says to hope and pray for a Charlestown man to see Reason is like praying for a Rooster to grow wool.
George, like the child he is, prays for war. Mason does not speak of it, but I know his conscience and his duty torment him like devils in his ears day and night. Father and Fairchild, I know, will take up arms for our fair State if it comes to that, but both only for Love of a quiet life here on The Hill. They will all march away to the drumbeat of duty, and nothing I do or say could drown out that terrible call which sounds sometimes in my dreams. I can do nothing but "lift up mine eyes unto the hills, whence cometh my help," seeking guidance - and to keep these girlish tears from spoiling my pages . . . There is still hope, I know, that secession may not come, or if secession comes, that war may not follow. But the speech of men, from President Buchanan's recent oration on down to one's dinner conversation give not much reason for optimistic feeling.
When these dreary waves steal over me, however, I have but to think of you and Timothy and my heart discovers gladness again. Yesterday we held in solemn remembrance of your family's loss. I do share your grief, missing your mother as I do my own. A more charitable and prudent woman there never was, and the angel choirs of heaven rejoice, I'm sure, to have her as we have wept to lose her. Do not, I pray you, haste out of mourning if your heart is not in it. It were better to wear gray and lavender and sit-in some evenings than to show a countenance yet sallow with grief to society. Losing my own dear Mama long ago has taught me - Time is the Great Physician of Life's wounds, but one must not shift his bandages too soon if one wishes for effectual healing.
I do hope your family may come out to Winchester for Christmas! My Aunt Nadia and your Aunt Anne are bustling in torrential preparation for the Ladies Society Ball, and I long to see you and your new dress! Timothy, as you know, owes me too many dances to count, and I wish for you to view my own new holiday gown - though, to be entirely honest, it is but an old blue satin of Aunt Nadia's which I have taken apart and reworked in the latest style from Richmond. I believe even your trained eye may be pleased with the result.
I expect that Fairchild and Mary Wilcox will announce an engagement before long - perhaps even at the Ball come Christmas. I wish them every happiness, even in these worrisome times. Amor vincit omnia. Love seems on his mind, for Fairchild promises to introduce me to a friend from Washington College, a one Mr. Alfred Fleming of New Market, whom he says will inherit an uncle's farm nearby in Purcellville before too long. I blush at this, as any proper girl would, but Fairchild teases me mercilessly and says my age and spindle-marked hands proclaim me almost a spinster. I defied him to produce any mousy Washington College greekling who could conquer my affection, but all he did was wink at me, like a vulgar schoolboy. We shall see - Mr. Fleming's demeanor at the Ball will uncover his true character in any respect.
I implore Almighty God day and night for the continued health and safety of you and your family. May your joys increase tenfold this Christmastide, and may Providence see us soon in each other's company once more.
With all possible affection,
Margaret-Ellen Hamilton Copeland
12 December 1860
Dearest Adah,
Friend, I hope you may forgive the tardiness of this letter. Duties here on The Hill pause not for sisterly affection. Father and my brothers are daily in the fields, from morning dark 'til the last gloaming. Hay must be gathered in and land plowed under, great mountains of winter firewood felled and corded, feed corn carefully laid-in. Their days may be full - but work waits always for the woman of the house! I have preserved 4 bushels of winter apples, and made another bushels worth of pies, which Cleo and I spend the afternoons distributing to the less fortunate families near Potts Hill. George has outgrown last year's coat, and Fairchild mangled his own on a fence-nail last week - thus my mending pile grows. My basket is full of wool to spin and weave into blankets and long-johns - Fairchild hints that I must procure a good pattern for a cavalry coat, but I wish he would keep his dark musings to himself. All this and gathering-in and cellaring the last harvest from my garden, and thus my pen and paper lie idle on my desk for weeks and days, waiting patiently for time to afford reverie. How I miss the slow idle summer days at White Oak House - nothing but yards of Boston silk and knots in my thread to distract me from your beloved company.
Yet, I cannot help but give thanks to God in small part for the unrelenting duties of our farm, for I fear familial relations between Mason and the rest have not improved. The neighbors keep their polite distance from the subject, so some of my prayers are answered, at least. But Mason continues to heap appellations of "Liberator" and "Preserver" on Mr. Lincoln, and Father gets his blood up and it is all Fairchild can do to preserve them from coming to blows. George, as you know, worships Father, and like the hot-head he is refused to even acknowledge Mason most days. The heat and flurry of our late-Autumn chores do little to warm the chill of sectionalism which plagues this house. Dearest Adah, most faithful and patient of all my childhood friends - forgive my frank disclosures of domestic discord. I know it is not decorous or proper to mention such unpleasantness in a letter, but I mention them only to beg you continue to lift up this family in prayer to the Almighty, who alone works the miracle of peace in the hearts of men.
We were in Winchester near the end of November for Thanksgiving at Aunt Nadia's, and heard your father's old friend, Mr. A.H.H. Boyd, preach at the Loudon Street Church. He was in good form, but his words made me mourn for my country and my state even more deeply than for my family. He spoke of the sectionalists in the North who have made the thought of Union hateful to their southern brethren - I remember his words very clearly: "What was considered our richest inheritance is now only the source of embittered feeling . . . to all human appearance nothing but divine interposition will avail to our deliverance from the apalling calamities that threaten us."
To that hope of Divine Mercy we must all now cling, and pray to Him who makes all men brothers for wisdom and temperance to govern the minds of those shortly attending the convention in Columbia. I will hold tight to hope and joy, though Fairchild says to hope and pray for a Charlestown man to see Reason is like praying for a Rooster to grow wool.
George, like the child he is, prays for war. Mason does not speak of it, but I know his conscience and his duty torment him like devils in his ears day and night. Father and Fairchild, I know, will take up arms for our fair State if it comes to that, but both only for Love of a quiet life here on The Hill. They will all march away to the drumbeat of duty, and nothing I do or say could drown out that terrible call which sounds sometimes in my dreams. I can do nothing but "lift up mine eyes unto the hills, whence cometh my help," seeking guidance - and to keep these girlish tears from spoiling my pages . . . There is still hope, I know, that secession may not come, or if secession comes, that war may not follow. But the speech of men, from President Buchanan's recent oration on down to one's dinner conversation give not much reason for optimistic feeling.
When these dreary waves steal over me, however, I have but to think of you and Timothy and my heart discovers gladness again. Yesterday we held in solemn remembrance of your family's loss. I do share your grief, missing your mother as I do my own. A more charitable and prudent woman there never was, and the angel choirs of heaven rejoice, I'm sure, to have her as we have wept to lose her. Do not, I pray you, haste out of mourning if your heart is not in it. It were better to wear gray and lavender and sit-in some evenings than to show a countenance yet sallow with grief to society. Losing my own dear Mama long ago has taught me - Time is the Great Physician of Life's wounds, but one must not shift his bandages too soon if one wishes for effectual healing.
I do hope your family may come out to Winchester for Christmas! My Aunt Nadia and your Aunt Anne are bustling in torrential preparation for the Ladies Society Ball, and I long to see you and your new dress! Timothy, as you know, owes me too many dances to count, and I wish for you to view my own new holiday gown - though, to be entirely honest, it is but an old blue satin of Aunt Nadia's which I have taken apart and reworked in the latest style from Richmond. I believe even your trained eye may be pleased with the result.
I expect that Fairchild and Mary Wilcox will announce an engagement before long - perhaps even at the Ball come Christmas. I wish them every happiness, even in these worrisome times. Amor vincit omnia. Love seems on his mind, for Fairchild promises to introduce me to a friend from Washington College, a one Mr. Alfred Fleming of New Market, whom he says will inherit an uncle's farm nearby in Purcellville before too long. I blush at this, as any proper girl would, but Fairchild teases me mercilessly and says my age and spindle-marked hands proclaim me almost a spinster. I defied him to produce any mousy Washington College greekling who could conquer my affection, but all he did was wink at me, like a vulgar schoolboy. We shall see - Mr. Fleming's demeanor at the Ball will uncover his true character in any respect.
I implore Almighty God day and night for the continued health and safety of you and your family. May your joys increase tenfold this Christmastide, and may Providence see us soon in each other's company once more.
With all possible affection,
Margaret-Ellen Hamilton Copeland
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