Early in 1862 Patterson himself became strangely involved in the war. Entrusted by the governor of New Hampshire with a commission to take funds raised in New Hampshire to help northern sympathizers in the South, he journeyed down to Washington to carry out his assignment. While there he went out sightseeing to the battlefield at Bull Run, but venturing too near the southern lines, he was captured and carried off to prison. On April 2 he wrote from Richmond:
You will be amazed to learn that I am in prison. . . . But God alone can tell what will become of my poor sick wife with none near to care for her “but God who tempers the wind to the shorn lamb” will care for you. . . . My anxiety for you is intense but be of as good cheer as possible and trust in God.102
Mrs. Patterson at once rallied to the emergency and began sending letters to anyone, including Franklin Pierce, who might prod the War Department to greater efforts to have him released through an exchange of prisoners.
On May 12 she wrote Patterson’s brother James in Saco, Maine, enclosing “the last intelligence from my poor husband,” telling him of the fruitlessness of her efforts to date, and signing herself, “Your desolate sister, Mary M. Patterson.”103 A week later Patterson wrote her that he had been transferred to the appalling prison at Salisbury, North Carolina, and expressed a hope that George Glover might be discharged before long and come to her rescue, “as I can do nothing for you or even myself.”104
Obviously something had to be done for her, since her health had taken a turn for the worse. For some time she had been hesitating ● ● ●
102 Daniel Patterson to Mary Baker Patterson, 2 April 1862, L16248, MBEL. At this early stage of his imprisonment Patterson did not sound uncheerful.
↑103 Mary Baker Patterson to James Patterson, 12 May 1862, 1919.001.0014, LMC. “O! how dark are the mysteries of His hand when it is laid so heavily upon us!” the writer exclaimed somberly.
↑104 Daniel Patterson to Mary Baker Patterson, 19 May 1862, L16253, MBEL. Mrs. Patterson expressed her own affectionate anxiety at this time in a poem entitled “To a Bird Flying Southward” which recalled some of her earlier feelings for North Carolina. Mary A. Patterson [sic], “To a Bird Flying Southward,” The Independent Democrat (Concord, NH), 3 July 1862, p. 4.
↑