Berdan’s Sharpshooters,………………..
Camp before Yorktown, April 11, 1862.
Dear Cousin: Your welcome and full letter brought joy and facts. . As for us, we are sitting down before Yorktown, as yet untaken. The enemy retreated before us, first from Great Bethel, then from the extensive entrenchments at Smithville, two miles beyond. Yorktown is their stronghold; the works are understood to extend pretty much all the way across the Peninsula to the James. They have some forty guns on the works now facing us.
On the 5th, we saw something like war. As the head of Porter’s Column—we are that head—emerged from the wood and rose upon the open land which forms a gradual natural glacis to the batteries, we were saluted with shell after shell, and all day the shell and round shot and rifle bullets cracked and boomed and whizzed about us. We, as usual, skimmed the crême de la crême, being posted as skirmishers, as well under cover as we could get, about three-fourths of a mile in advance of the main army, and one-half mile in advance of our own artillery. We lost two and had four wounded during the day, and it is most unaccountable that our loss was not twenty times as great; for the horrid, detestable music of shot and shell and ball was almost continually tingling our ears. One of the killed was in my own company—Phelps. I had him buried next day—a sweet Sunday—and laid the green turf neatly over the mound. . . . By the way, I think of you and Eliza as I see the little hospital flags hung out from all the more respectable farmhouses. . . . General Porter said in a note of commendation on our regiment, read on parade, that the enemy “by their own admissions had begun to fear us and provide against us as far as possible.” This praise has rather turned the head of our Colonel. Moi, I have been too cold, too weary, too wet, too unslept, too unwashed, to feel conceited or proud. Further, our teams have not yet come up with the officer’s baggage, so I am without mutations of raiment, or have to depend on strangers for the same; also am only one-half blanketed. But these are minor ills, for which, no doubt, our lovers are pitying us more than we deserve as they sit in their boudoirs far away.
The brandy and things which you sent me, just before going off, were very valuable. I had a few swallows of the liquor left in my flask a few nights since on picket, and it proved worth more than so much liquid gold. A soldier of the 2nd Maine, on picket with my men, was struck by a ball which broke his leg. He crawled through the rain and cold of that miserable night, half a mile, on his hands and knees, to the reserve picket, and was just fainting when I came in with your brandy, treasured up for just such a moment.
The weather is now fair and warm and delicious. I walked through the woods this A. M. before reveille, to the sandy beach of York River, and saw the sun come up out of the sea; and watched our gunboats, which are ready to cooperate when the right moment comes. I hope we shall not be cheated out of a good battle.
April 11.—Miss Booth and myself arrived at Corinth to-day. It was raining when we left Mrs. Henderson’s, and as her carriage was out of repair, she sent us to the depot in an open wagon. We enjoyed the novel ride, and began to feel that we were in the service in reality. My heart beat high with expectation as we neared Corinth. As I had never been where there was a large army, and had never seen a wounded man, except in the cars, as they passed, I could not help feeling a little nervous at the prospect of now seeing both. When within a few miles of the place, we could realize the condition of an army immediately after a battle. As it had been raining for days, water and mud abounded. Here and there were wagons hopelessly left to their fate, and men on horseback trying to wade through it. As far as the eye could reach, in the midst of all this slop and mud, the white tents of our brave army could be seen through the trees, making a picture suggestive of any thing but comfort. My thoughts wandered back to the days of ancient Corinth, and the time it was besieged by the brave and warlike Romans, when the heroic Greeks had to succumb through the fault of their commander. I think of this only in contrast; for the Federals are as unlike the former as our fate will be unlike that of the latter. We have not a Diæus commanding, but the dauntless Beauregard and patriotic Bragg, who, knowing their rights, dare and will maintain them, though the whole North be arrayed against them. I am certain of one thing: that neither the Roman nor Greek armies, brave as history has portrayed them, were composed of more high-souled and determined men than those of ours.
