Observing Mars every other night, and serving Mars the rest of the time! His wife’s step-brothers Constant and Jasper Woodward were both wounded. Jasper, the best of the Woodward brothers, was a lieutenant, and led his company at Bull Run, the captain having scalded himself slightly with hot coffee in order to keep out of the fight. Jasper was an exceedingly bashful fellow, but a magnificent soldier, and he fairly gloried in the battle. When he fell, and his company broke in retreat, Constant paused to take a last shot in revenge, and was himself wounded. Mr. Hall found them both, Constant fretful and complaining, though not seriously wounded, and Jasper still glorying in the fight. The gallant fellow’s wound did not seem fatal; but having been left in a damp stone church, he had taken cold in it, so that he died.
Next followed the battle of Antietam, and the astronomer’s wife, unable to find out who had won, and fearful lest communication with Washington might be cut off if she delayed, hastened thither. Now Col. A. J. Warner, a McGrawville schoolmate, whose family lived with the Halls in Georgetown, was brought home shot through the hip. To add to the trials of the household, little A. and the colonel’s boy Elmer came down with diphtheria. Through the unflagging care and nursing of his mother, little A. lived. But Elmer died. Mr. Hall, exhausted by the hot, unwholesome climate no less than by his constant exertions in behalf of wounded friends, broke down, and was confined within doors six weeks with jaundice. Indeed, it was two years before he fully recovered. Strange that historians of the Civil War have not dwelt upon the enormous advantage to the Confederates afforded by their hot, enervating climate, so deadly to the Northern volunteer.
In January, 1863, the Halls and Warners moved to a house in Washington, on I Street, between 20th and 21st Streets, N.W. Here a third surgical operation on the wounded colonel proved successful. Though he nearly bled to death, the distorted bullet was at last pulled out through the hole it had made in the flat part of the hip bone. Deceived by the doctors before, the poor man cried: “Mr. Hall, is the ball out? Is the ball out?”
Soon after this, in March, small-pox, which was prevalent in the city, broke out in the house, and Mr. Hall sent his wife and little boy to Cambridge, Mass. There she stayed with her friend Miss Sarah Waitt; and there she wrote the following letter to Captain Gillis, Superintendent of the Naval Observatory:
Cambridge, Apr. 17, 1863.
Capt. Gillis.
Dear Sir: I received a letter from Mr. Hall this morning saying that Prof. Hesse has resigned his place at the Observatory. I wish Mr. Hall might have the vacant place.
If the question is one of ability, I should be more than willing that he with all other competitors should have a thorough and impartial examination. I know I should be proud of the result. If on the other hand the question is who has the greatest number of influential friends to push him forward whether qualified or unqualified, I fear, alas! that he will fail. He stands alone on his merits, but his success is only a question of time. I, more than any one, know of all his long, patient and faithful study. A few years, and he, like Johnson, will be beyond the help of some Lord Chesterfield.
Mr. Hall writes me that he shall do nothing but wait. I could not bear not to have his name at least proposed.
Truly,