Following the American Civil War Sesquicentennial with day by day writings of the time, currently 1863.

Monday, January 2, 2012

2nd. Wrote some and read in “Shirley.”

Fayetteville, Virginia, January 2, 1862.

Dearest: — I hope you all enjoyed New Year’s Day. I dispatched you “a happy New Year’s” which I suppose you got. We had nothing unusual. The weather still good. Twenty-six fine days in December, and a start of two for the new year.

Dr. Jim got a letter from Joe yesterday. Sergeant McKinley was drunk. I doubted him somewhat, but thought if trusted with an errand, he would keep straight until it was done. A good soldier in camp—somewhat obtrusive and talkative, but always soldierlike. He got into the guard-house for raising Ned at Gallipolis.[1]

For convenience of forage, and at the request of Union citizens, a detachment of five companies — two of Twenty-third, one of Twenty-sixth, and two of Thirtieth — have occupied Raleigh. All quiet there. One or two other places may be occupied in the same way, in which case I shall go with the next detachment. This all depends on the continuance of good weather and roads. I do not mean to let it prevent my going home the latter part of this month, and it will not unless the enemy wakes up again. At present their attention is so occupied on the seacoast and elsewhere that we hear nothing of them. . . . Dr. Hayes is a quiet, nice gentleman. Jim likes him very much. Jim is now acting surgeon of the Twenty-third under employment by Dr. Hayes as “a private physician” — that is, at a hundred dollars per month.

As detachments are likely to be sent off if this good weather lasts, Dr. Joe better return when it is perfectly safe for him to do so — not before.

I shall come home as soon as possible. Nothing but these good roads and fine weather keeps me here now. If the weather and roads were bad I would start within a week; but in such weather I don’t feel that it would be safe to leave. We may be required to move forward, or to be ready for movements of the enemy. Such weather puts us into a campaign again. We have had men sixty miles further south and forty east within a week or ten days. No symptom of enmity anywhere. . . .

Affectionately,

R.

Mrs. Hayes.


[1] Mrs. Hayes wrote, January 5: “Your Sergeant McKinley is a curiosity. . . . Don’t say anything about the sergeant’s condition when he called, for getting home had overcome him and it did not affect me in the least”

Thursday, January 2, 1862. — Cleared off moderately cold; quiet and beautiful weather. Remarkable season. Rode with Colonel Scammon about the works. Major Comly reports finding about one hundred and twenty muskets, etc., concealed in and about Raleigh; also twelve or fifteen contrabands arrived. What to do with them is not so troublesome yet as at the East. Officers and soldiers employ them as cooks and servants. Some go on to Ohio.

Nobody in this army thinks of giving up to Rebels their fugitive slaves. Union men might perhaps be differently dealt with — probably would be. If no doubt of their loyalty, I suppose they would again get their slaves. The man who repudiates all obligations under the Constitution and laws of the United States is to be treated as having forfeited those rights which depend solely on the laws and Constitution. I don’t want to see Congress meddling with the slavery question. Time and the progress of events are solving all the questions arising out or slavery in a way consistent with eternal principles of justice. Slavery is getting death-blows. As an “institution,” it perishes in this war. It will take years to get rid of its debris, but the “sacred” is gone.

January 2, 1862.

We’ve waited patiently until after New Year for the box of provisions, and nary box yet. Have given it up for a goner. We’re just as much obliged to you as though we had received it. We haven’t yet eaten all the tomatoes, etc., that came with the quilts. Partly because we are too lazy to cook them, but mostly because we don’t hanker arter them. Beans, bacon and potatoes are our special hobbies or favorites rather, and we are never dissatisfied on our inner man’s account when we have them in abundance and of good quality. Company H of the 17th, Captain Boyd, was down here on the 30th. All the boys save Chancy Black and Billy Stockdale were along. We had a grand time, Nelson’s, Boyd’s and our boys being together for the first time in the war. Yesterday, New Year, the camp enjoyed a general frolic. A hundred or two cavalry boys dressed themselves to represent Thompson’s men and went galloping around camp scattering the footmen and making noise enough to be heard in Columbus. The officers of the 11th Infantry were out making New Year calls in an army wagon with 30 horses to it, preceded by a splendid band. The “boys” got a burlesque on the “ossifers.” They hitched 20 mules to a wagon and filled it with a tin pan and stovepipe band, and then followed it in 60-mule wagon around the camp and serenaded all the headquarters.

General Paine said to-day that our regiment and the 11th would move in a week, but I don’t believe it.

Thursday, 2d—Nothing of importance. The weather is quite cold, but since we are in a building with stoves and plenty of wood, we do not suffer from the cold. Lookout Station is a small town on the railroad between California and Jefferson City; there is a store, tavern, and twelve residences, some of which are vacant, and the country around is heavily timbered.

2nd.—I think my hospital can boast, just now, the happiest set of sick men I ever saw. I have now twenty-seven of them. This morning, as I was prescribing for them, (all sitting up) some reading the morning papers, and talking loudly over war news, some playing whist, some checkers, some chess, some dominoes—all laughing and merry, Gen. H––– walked in, and, looking for a moment along the line of sick, exclaimed, “What the h—ll have you got here?” “My hospital, General.” “A Brigade,” replied he in his roughest manner, “of a d—d sight better men than you have left me. Where are your sick, sir?” “All here, sir.” “Well, this beats anything I have seen in the army, and if you give your men such beds and such comforts as this, you will have every man of your regiment in hospital before a month.” They have had a glorious holiday. The boxes, and other presents received within the last eight days, have awakened vivid recollections of home, and of “the girls they left behind them.” They are all the better for these things, and when I return them to their quarters, they take hold of their work with a will, and with a feeling that if taken sick, they have a pleasant hospital to go to.

I make here a record of some observations in relation to “hospital fevers,” “hospital sores,” “foul air of hospitals,” and such clap-trap. I have lately visited many tent hospitals, in the open field, where I have witnessed cases of “hospital gangrene,” low typhoid fevers, with gangrenous toes or fingers dropping off, and heard scientific men, in scientific discussions, attributing it all to the foul air of the hospital! And this, too, in the open field, where not more than thirty or forty were together, and where the wind swept past them, free as the fresh breezes on the top of the Alleghanies!! ‘Twas a gangrene of the mind, for want of free ventilation of the brain. There is no disease so contagious, or so depressing to vital energy when taken, as inactivity and gloominess of mind. Introduce one such temperament into your hospital, without an accompanying antidote, and the condition will be communicated to all others in the hospital, with as much certainty, and with greater rapidity, than would the infection of small-pox or measles. Let the admission of such a patient be accompanied by the presence of a long, sour-faced hospital steward, who keeps in the hospital tent a table covered with cups, and spoons, and vials, and pill-boxes, and syringes, and who mingles with every potion he gives a homily on hospital sickness, on fatality in the army, on the number of deaths from typhoid in the next tent, and my word and observation for it, though the breezes of that hospital come fresh “from Greenland’s icy mountains,” they will be freighted with the mephitic vapors of hospital fever and gangrene.

Instead of the above, let the Surgeon pass frequently through his hospital, making it a rule never to leave till he has elicited a hearty laugh from every one in it. For his Steward’s table of mirth-repelling instruments, introduce light reading, chess-men, checkers, dominoes, cards, puzzles, their use to be regulated by a corps of jolly, mirth loving, but judicious nurses. Then let him throw up the bottoms of his tent walls, giving everything around an air of cheerfulness, and if he does not find the diseases of the field hospital milder and more tractable than at home, my word for it, it will be in consequence of the officious over-dosing by the doctor. I do not mean that cleanliness is not an essential; but I must bear in mind that a pile of nasty, out-of-place rubbish, is as incompatible with cheerfulness, as it is with purity of surrounding air. A clean bed, even, exhilarates the mind, as promptly as it corrects the foul odors of a soiled one. Since I have been in the army, I have lost all dread of the much-talked-of foul air of hospitals, only so far as it is difficult to correct the mental atmosphere about it. This is in reference to its influence on diseases. I have not yet had an opportunity of observing the effects of crowds in surgical wards—that will come before long, and I shall be greatly relieved if I find the same records applicable there.

Jany 2nd 1862

It has been cooler today but not freezing until night, high wind last night which changed before morning. In the office today. Nothing new stirring. The presidents sons here again to dinner with our boys who went home with them and did not return till near 9 o’clock. The boys have a show at the White House, Magic Lantern &c. The President usualy looks in. They say they send him a free ticket!! Mr & Mrs Lincoln take particular notice of our boys. They have dined with the President on two or three occasions. They have the “run” of the “White House.” Col Merrick and I went down to Willards this evening, the first time he has been out. Saw Genl McDowell and some other notables, came home before 7 o’clk. Mis Lowry called and spent an hour. The Col and I took a litle hot whiskey about 9 and the Col retired. 11 o’clock now, I am to bed too.

 

______

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.

January 2 — Last night after everybody in the barn had settled down to the slumber point I heard a horseman hurriedly approach the barn. I was very uneasy for fear it was a courier with a dispatch for the battery to turn out and go to the river, as the pickets were still firing. It was a courier, but he called for the Brock’s Gap Rifles, some of which were with us in the barn, to go to the river, sharp-shooting.

The Brock’s Gap Rifles is a company from Brock’s Gap, Rockingham County, Va., commanded by Captain Winfield (Dr. W.). The majority of the members are first-class marksmen, and if a Brock’s Gap rifleman gets good aim at a Yank at a reasonable distance he generally gives him a pass for immediate use to that “country from whose bourne no traveler returns,” or else invites him to report at the hospital for repairs.

To-day we moved to a woods two miles from the dam, where we camped to-night.

Jan. 2, 1862.—I am glad enough to bid ‘61 goodbye. Most miserable year of my life! What ages of thought and experience have I not lived in it.

Last Sunday I walked home from church with a young lady teacher in the public schools. The teachers have been paid recently in “shin-plasters.” I don’t understand the horrid name, but nobody seems to have any confidence in the scrip. In pure benevolence I advised my friend to get her money changed into coin, as in case the Federals took the city she would be in a bad fix, being in rather a lonely position. She turned upon me in a rage.

“You are a black-hearted traitor,” she almost screamed at me in the street, this well-bred girl! “My money is just as good as coin you’ll see! Go to Yankee land. It will suit you better with your sordid views and want of faith, than the generous South.”

“Well,” I replied, “when I think of going, I’ll come to you for a letter of introduction to your grandfather in Yankee land.” I said good-morning and turned down another street in a sort of a maze, trying to put myself in her place and see what there was sordid in my advice.

Luckily I met Mrs. B. to turn the current of thought. She was very merry. The city authorities have been searching houses for fire-arms. It is a good way to get more guns, and the homes of those men suspected of being Unionists were searched first. Of course they went to Dr. B.’s. He met them with his own delightful courtesy. “Wish to search for arms? Certainly, gentlemen.” He conducted them through all the house with smiling readiness, and after what seemed a very thorough search bowed them politely out. His gun was all the time safely reposing between the canvas folds of a cot-bed which leaned folded up together against the wall, in the very room where they had ransacked the closets. Queerly, the rebel families have been the ones most anxious to conceal all weapons. They have dug pits quietly at night in the back yards, and carefully wrapping the weapons, buried them out of sight. Every man seems to think he will have some private fighting to do to protect his family.

______

Note: To protect Mrs. Miller’s job as a teacher in New Orleans, the diary was published anonymously, edited by G. W. Cable, names were changed and initials were often used instead of full names — and even the initials differed from the real person’s initials.

JANUARY 2D.-The enemy are making preparations to assail us everywhere. Roanoke Island, Norfolk, Beaufort, and Newbern; Charleston, Savannah, Mobile, Pensacola, and New Orleans are all menaced by numerous fleets on the sea-board, and in the West great numbers of iron-clad floating batteries threaten to force a passage down the Mississippi, while monster armies are concentrating for the invasion of Tennessee and the Cotton States. Will Virginia escape the scourge? Not she; here is the bull’s-eye of the mark they aim at.