After reaching Washington, the 64th NY settled into Camp R.E. Fenton, 2 ½ miles from the capital. The men named the camp after R.E. Fenton, a congressman from back home who would later become governor of NY. In his letters James describes the routines of camp life: daily drills, picket duty and pitching tents. The men received packages from home and read the reports of the war in the newspapers. James writes that the NY Tribune's "war news rivals the Herald for a good lying." He is frustrated by his inability to rise in the regiment, the uncertainty as to where the regiment will be placed and the delay of the paymaster. The men would have to wait until February 9th, for their wages to arrive. At that time James' father E.M. Pettit came to visit them at their new camp in Alexandria and carried some of the men's pay home to their families. 

Disease was rampant in the camps during the Civil War killing many soldiers before they ever reached the battlefields. By the end of the war in 1865, approximately 2,795 officers and 221,791 enlisted men in the US Army would die from disease. (SEE CHART)Throughout his letters James mentions the men in the company who have fallen ill, have been hospitalized, or have died from disease. When a soldier in their company died, the men would collect money to send the body and personal effects home. James was also ill for a time in late December and was taken by his friend Chauncey Joslin to the nearby Douglas Farm to recuperate. To his brother-in-law Darwin, James writes:

Two of our men Frank Parker and a man named Wilcox are in one of the Hospitals acrofs the river but we have had no word from then since we came over here. About 15 men are excused daily from duty on account of colds or Diarrhea, which latter has broken out anew within the past week and is now very prevalent. READ LETTER

The next week, he continues:

'Tis a sad thing for us to lessen our nos. by death, but by the worst feature to us is the effect such calamities outside from the circle of relatives of the diseased. The sudden arrival of the bodies of two boys both from our neighborhood has and must have a far more appalling effect upon the friends of those remaining than there deaths can have at camp, where the whole tenor of everyday life is to make us forget such realities. READ LETTER