[Newport News, Virginia]
July 31, 1861
My Dear Wife,
Yours of the 28th was most gratefully received today. It is over three weeks since I got a letter from home. All yours of previous date, spectacles and all, went south and have not yet returned. I see in today’s paper that one of the gunboats — the Monticello — has been returned to her owners and this may share a similar fate.
All are on the qui vive here in expectation of an attack upon this post but I must frankly tell you that I have no apprehension of anything so desirable for so far as my poor services go, I am anxious to be able to have an opportunity occur in which I can serve my country acceptably.
I got an order to re-vaccinate our men today and replied that I had vaccinated them and that on receipt of good virus I would do it again.
Flag Officer Stringham has returned but we do not know whither we go, or go we at all. It will take a week or ten days yet to get our machinery, and 3 days to put it together, which time I hoped to have spent in the sweetest family sociability. But the expected attack of the camp and squadron will not at present permit me to leave. My dears, I am only absent from you in body; in all other respects I am with you ever and always.
You say in your post script that Maggie and Debbie sent lots of love to me, which I accept with great pleasure, returning the same in quality and amount to which compound interest is added. You also speak of Dr. Snell & Family to whom speak also flatteringly for me.
I was happy to learn of Asahel’s visit to you. Always remember me to them all. I will write to him as soon as I get something to communicate.
Before I received yours, you must have received stacks of letters from your wandering, provoking, loving and beloved husband. I write pretty nearly every day so as to keep your spare time occupied in thinking of your old lover. I only hope you have been as industrious in writing to me as I have been in writing.
I will give you a rule by which you can always know the number of letters I write, viz: — Divide the whole number of days of my absence by 2 and you can rely upon the correctness of the product. Tomorrow I shall write to Father and Mother. You do not speak of Henry so I conclude he is not with you.
Congratulate all the McDonald’s, the Holmes’, and Ogden’s for me on their safe return, and tell all who inquire after me that I hope to return in the course of human events when I have done my share also in my country’s cause.
That expanding bud of promise so much loved by us and so tenderly “nursed” by you, occupies many, many happy moments of my reflection. And the other dear children also. Poor darlings, they shall have a piano and they shall have Pa’s company on a jolly picnic excursion when he returns. O how we will make up for lost time then, my pets. I look at you every day but it is only a faint unsubstantial satisfaction — no real living luxury on which to fondly gaze and kiss, and gaze again. But this little is highly prized by me.
I must now say goodbye for the present, with a thousand kisses all round. I shall keep you posted of all that’s passing and especially of the prospects of my paying you a brief visit.
Your affectionate husband and father, — Allen S. Heath
In the Trough of the Sea 