Hanson Gap, Sept. 8, 1866

Dear Fuller:--

...Yes, I hope I am going in October to Port Royal. Terrific accounts of yellow fever and cholera at Charleston and Savannah continue to pour in, so everything is still uncertain.* Our winter's work will not amount fo much if we do not go soon. And with such a magnificent president to stand our friend, I greatly fear that this is the last winter we shall have to work. Oh, Fuller, how much faith one needs in Supreme wisdom and power to bear such things with equanimity as we have to bear in these miserable days! What a man to be Abraham Lincoln's successor! What a spectacle for the world to laugh at--the Chief Magistrate of such a nation as ours going about making speeches in such a style! As if it were not enough for him to act the enemy of the public good, he must make the whole country ridiculous.

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While spending the summer at home in New Hampshire, Jane had commented several times on the prospects of returning South. On July 31, 1866, she had written:

Why should I not go South? My duty is thre, my inclination leads me there; a great noble work is there which I am fitted to help do; my heart is in it--why should I turn away? You do not think, surely that my interest is in any part assumed, or that my attration is not in that very work itself.

I never like to talk about my devotion to other people, because it sounds so silly; but if I nknow myself, I do love the work with my whole heart, and I rejoice that I am counted worthy to make some slight sarifice for my Master's cause.

How egotistical all that sounds! Has it served my purposek, or do you only think the more that I am making a great fuss, and assuming virtues that I hae not? Perhaps my wisest course would be to comit all this to the flames.

However, Jane's eagerness to return to her work with the freedmen was to be thwarted for a time. In her letter of August 31, 1866, she explained to her future husband:

I supppose you will be as glad as I am vexed to hear that theere is no hope of my going South before October at the soonest. Cholera rages here & there, and before I reach Hilton Head, I have to go twice ito quarantine, fifteen days each time. That would be enither exciting or agreeable. I am sorry, but must bow to the decrees of fate.