Litchfield
Aug 31st 1862

My dear Uncle & Aunt,

You will not believe that I have not been thinking of you often since your great bereavement, because I have hitherto been silent. My frequent change of place since I learned that you had returned to New Haven has not allowed that quiet in which I could attempt to express to you my sympathy with you in this your crushing affliction, as well as my own sorrow and regret that our family has been deprived of one of its most amiable, affectionate & promising members. I feel that it would be assumption in me to attempt to offer words of consolation, a service of love which has been rendered by those eminently fitted to discharge it. I can only express my feelings of sympathy for you in this trial, whose greatness I cannot appreciate. 

When I say that I remember all my intercourse with Melzar with pleasure, and that his uniformly kind, considerate and gentle manners have seemed to me remarkable, I do but echo what you have often heard and well know. This realization of what he was increases your sense of loss.

In view of that loss, my mind often returns to this thought, that those who have through years of care and love trained up a son who has proved an eminent example of what the Christian soldier should be and has laid down his life on the altar of his bleeding country – that those parents should be and will be honored by all the good, as they have been honored by God in being made co-workers with him in his plan for the redemption of our land. As the blessings which will be secured by that redemption will be infinite, so the sacrifice is almost infinite, as yours now seems to you. 

When the keenness of sorrow is allayed the heart of the Christian which says “Thy will be done,” will find great consolation in the thoughts that the life so beloved has been given for that which will be of priceless value to our race, and which could not be purchased but at so great a cost.

For myself, I feel that I owe to you a debt that should always make me humble, and will I trust, ever make me grateful. Two of the male branches of our family have each given a son to our country [*]. There are several reasons, some of them imperative, which would prevent me, the sole representative of the third branch, from suffering in my person for the sacred cause. My cousins have died to purchase for me what they cannot enjoy. I can never repay them. They are enjoying their reward. 

But to you who have paid this inestimable price by which our family is so greatly honored – to you I owe an obligation whose greatness I cannot fully realize. May I ever show my sense of it. That our Heavenly Father in the greatness of his love may sanctify to you this sad trial and bring you safely to meet him who has gone before, is the prayer of your affectionate nephew.

Thos. R. Dutton