Jan. 5, 1863. Head Quarters, 2nd Divn.
My dear Guy: Mr. Alvord, Uncle Charles & your papa took a ride the other day to find [illeg. word] Brigade battery and just as we were passing the Huntwood[?] road we saw an ox-cart like the above [drawing]. It was an unusual sight in Virginia, but its contents, a lot of colored children: the short horns of the oxen, and the rickety old affair attracted our attention and I thought I would try to draw it for amy. You don’t see so many of these colored boys & girls as papa does. Uncle Charlie says they are very jubilant: i.e., they laugh & play a great deal. I don’t think they play any harder or any more than you and Wally Stinson. …