Tuesday, 10th—I was on camp-guard all last night, and until 9 o’clock this morning, when I was relieved. The order of the day was cleaning up camp and our clothes. Our camp is on high ground and we have plenty of wood for fires and for cooking. We also have good water, but have to go a half mile for it.
Saturday, December 10, 2011
Friday, January 10. — Heard rumors from Fayetteville of a great battle and victory at Bowling Green. Three thousand of our men killed and wounded. Enemy driven into the river — camp taken. One adds thirteen thousand taken prisoners. Floyd captured, says another. Fort Sumter retaken, says a third, and so on. Rode to Raleigh [slip of the pen for Fayetteville] with Avery, — very muddy — twenty-five miles in five to six hours. Rumors of the battle varied and conflicting. We ask all pickets and all we meet. As we approach Fayetteville the rumor loses strength. At Fayetteville, “Nothing of it, Colonel,” says a soldier. So we go.
A Walk into the Country.
Dec. 10. The weather holds warm and springlike. We have no need of overcoats, unless doing guard duty nights. The people here tell us it is an unusually mild fall, but that we shall get right smart lots of cold and snow before many days. I took a walk of a few miles into the country yesterday, on a tour of observation. I noticed what appeared to me a great extent of good land, but very badly improved. Occasionally I saw a farm where things seemed to be kept up snug and showed some evidences of thrift, but more of them looked as though the owners studied to see how shiftless they could be and still manage to live. Buildings and fences are going to decay; fields of corn are yet unharvested, the cattle and hogs running through and destroying them. I asked one man why he didn’t harvest his corn. “Oh,” he said, “there is no hurry about that, I have got all winter to do it in, and the corn is just as well off in the field as anywhere.” I came to the conclusion that his plan of harvesting was about as fast as he wanted it to eat. I said to another man I met, “You have good land about here, sir; easy of cultivation and close to a market. I suppose you make a pile of money?” “Oh, no,” he said, “you are mistaken; right poor land about yere, one can hardly make a living on it, but you go over yere a few miles to some creek [the name of which I have forgotten], and you will find right good land; make as much again corn on it as you can on this.” I asked, “What do you value this land at?” “Well,” he replied, “we reckon the land around yere worth about $10 an acre; reckon some of it mought be bought for a little less, but the land around Annapolis is worth from $25 to $50 an acre.” I made up my mind that a man with an ordinary degree of enterprise, with our improved implements for farming and with hired labor, might take this land and make money on it. I am unable to see any profits from slave labor in Maryland; it is poor help at the best; besides they have to be clothed and fed several months in a year during which time they are not earning much, and there is always on a farm employing a dozen or more field hands, a lot of old men and women and small children who are not earning anything, but still have to be supported.
TUESDAY 10
Too warm today for comfort. The Sun was quite oppressive in the middle of the day. Nothing new has taken place that I am aware of worth mentioning. I have spent the evening at home. Miss Mary Middleton called and at 9 o’clock I went over on to NY Ave for Julia, she being at Mr Hartlys. Julia and Martha H seem to be inseparable companions. Willie is quite unwell tonight, complains of his head. All the family except myself were up to the Presidents today. “Bud” brot home a water Lilly for the Aquarium. There were Indians from the west at the Presidents last night.
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The three diary manuscript volumes, Washington during the Civil War: The Diary of Horatio Nelson Taft, 1861-1865, are available online at The Library of Congress.
December 10th.—Paid a visit to Colonel Seaton, of the National Intelligencer, a man deservedly respected and esteemed for his private character, which has given its impress to the journal he has so long conducted. The New York papers ridicule the Washington organ, because it does not spread false reports daily in the form of telegraphic “sensation” news, and indeed one may be pretty sure that a fact is a fact when it is found in the Intelligencer; but the man, nevertheless, who is content with the information he gets from it, will have no reason to regret, in the accuracy of his knowledge or the soundness of his views, that he has not gone to its noisy and mendacious rivals. In the minds of all the very old men in the States, there is a feeling of great sadness and despondency respecting the present troubles, and though they cling to the idea of a restoration of the glorious Union of their youth, it is hoping against hope. “Our game is played out. It was the most wonderful and magnificent career of success the world ever saw, but rogues and gamblers took up the cards at last; they quarrelled, and are found out.”
In the evening, supped at Mr. Forney’s, where there was a very large gathering of gentlemen connected with the press; Mr. Cameron, Secretary of War; Colonel Mulligan, a tall young man, with dark hair falling on his shoulders, round a Celtic impulsive face, and a hazy enthusiastic-looking eye; and other celebrities.
Headquarters 2d Brigade,
Port Royal District, Dec. 10th, 1861.
My dear Mother:
I am still much busied — still find it difficult to cull even a few moments from multifarious duties, even to write my dear mother. I would like much to have a chance to write you a good long letter, yet must wait until more leisure shall fall to my share. We have the last few days been more than ever busy, owing to our formal occupation of Beaufort, where we are now pleasantly living. All sorts of comforts are at our disposal. The house occupied by the General is one belonging to Rev. (I think) Mr. Smith, an extremely elegant one. The portrait of Bishop Eliot looks down benignantly from over the mantel while I write.
I wish the owners were back in their old homes, notwithstanding they have relinquished all their old home luxuries to us. I do not, I think, possess quite enough of the Vandal spirit for anything like predative warfare. I have spoken of the extreme pressure of duties, and this you will understand when I tell you I often ride thirty miles, visiting posts, arranging pickets, and in the examination of doubtful points, during the day, besides performing many other duties, such as may fall to my share. I must say night generally finds me weary and after evening work is done, disinclined even to write you.
All things seem to thrive with us so far. What we still need is a sufficiently efficient organization to enable us to strike with rapidity. Here we are, nearly five weeks in possession of this point, and as yet we have hardly been able to get the stores ashore which we originally brought with us. And all this time too we read in the newspapers of the great zeal and activity displayed by Captain _____ who has charge of these things. By this time we ought, considering the great fear that filled the inhabitants on our first landing, to have been able to follow up our first successes by a series of determined blows, placing the entire State at our disposal. Still we are young at war, and cannot hope to learn all these things at once. We have however done something. Immense quantities of cattle, corn, and provisions have been gathered into the commissary stores, Hilton Head has been securely fortified, and some cotton saved, though much of the latter has been burned by the South Carolinians to prevent its falling into our hands. I think Cousin Louisa’s favorite, Sam Lord, is in the Army awaiting us on the mainland. At least I heard such to be the case from a negro driver on one of the plantations, who seemed to know him. The Pringles lived somewhere in this neighborhood too, so I am brought almost face to face with old friends.
Believe me,
Very Affec’y.,
W. T. Lusk.
Tuesday, December 10. — A little warm rain last night: cloudy and threatening rain in morning; turned off bright and clear. Had a good drill after evening parade. Moved into a good room in a pretty cottage house owned by J. H. Phillips, a drygoods dealer, who has left with the Rebels. His store was burned by McCook’s men because he was a persecutor of Union men. Captain Sperry and Lieutenant Kennedy are my co-tenants. We shall take good care of the premises and try to leave them in as good condition as we find them.
DECEMBER 10TH.—Nothing new.
Unger’s Store, December 10, 1861.
I made application yesterday for leave of absence, but was informed that I could not get it until Col. Echols returned, who has leave for twenty-five days and starts home this morning. It is to me a sad disappointment, but I must bear it as cheerfully as I can. You must do the same. You must make up your mind, too, Love, to stay at home. In the present state of our finances we must save all we can, and this, I feel sure, will be best done by your staying on the farm. I think, too, you will be as happy there as you could be elsewhere.
Boston, December 10, 1861
Yours of the 23d of last month reached me yesterday… If we are going to have such a storm as you intimate, I should have to go, so anyhow, and if indeed “all that remains is to drop gracefully,” it will not do me or any one else any good for me to anxiously hang on here a few days longer. Yet it does make me feel terribly. We have blundered all summer long and now we have capstoned our blunders by blundering into a war with England. So be it. While there’s life there’s hope; but I go into the army with a bitter feeling against those under whose lead we have come to this pass, and amid all the shattered idols of my whole life I don’t feel as if I cared much when my turn came. I suppose now I shall go into the field against a foreign enemy and I ought to rejoice at that. Still, I don’t. Against the rebels I could fight with a will and in earnest. They are traitors, they war for a lie, they are the enemies of morals, of government, and of man. In them we fight against a great wrong — but against England, we shall have forced her into war when she only asked for peace; we shall have made that a cause of quarrel which a few soft words might have turned away. It will be a wicked and causeless war wantonly brought about by us and one in which I most unwillingly would go to my death.
As for Seward I cannot comprehend his policy and so I cannot judge of it, and most slowly and reluctantly will I surrender my faith in him. His policy has been to keep a firm front, and in this it was wise; but I think he might have made himself less offensive to foreign powers in doing it, and I somewhat doubt the expediency of bragging yourself out of the game, as you tell me he has done. Still we have made our bed and now we must lie on it.
I shall probably have joined my regiment this week or early next. You will be surprised to hear that I shall probably regularly enlist and make my debut as a simple sergeant in Caspar Crowninshield’s company. The truth is they have so backed and filled, and hesitated and delayed, that, having determined to go, I have lost my patience, and have signified to them that I am ready to wait in the ranks until they are ready to give me a commission. Caspar got his company as a promotion for his behavior at Balls Bluff, and I shall get mine, I suppose, at some indefinite future period, when Sargent ceases to be a gas-bag and Williams feels the regiment under his thumb. Meanwhile I shall rough and fight it out with the rest, sleep fifteen in a tent with stable-boys, groom horses, feed like a hog and never wash, and such is my future! Well, it is better than my present, for I shall at least, by going into the army, get rid of the war.
Your last letter, and your statement that there was nothing left but a suspension of relations with England, came peculiarly unpleasantly just now. I had again begun to hope. Our blockade has become so effective and we are developing such enormous strength, that in spite of blunders, the confederates seemed likely to be crushed by brute force and starved to death, while we are really more prosperous than we have been for a year, and our poor more comfortable than they have been for four years. The confederates already, before winter begins, are regulating by law the profit on “articles of prime necessity,” and what would it have been before spring? I had begun to hope yet to see this rebellion collapse. Of course a war with England exactly reverses positions. It will be short and desperate, and end in the establishment of a confederate government, I suppose. However, a glorious indifference is coming over me. I can live on my pay, the world will not come to an end this time, and if I do, I shall doubtless be very comfortable in my grave. But I do hate to be blundered out of existence and, before a foreign war just as we were getting the whip-hand. Even Balls Bluff will hide a diminished head; it will stand forth in all history as the Koh-i-noor of blunders. . . .
