Friday, 7th.—Marched over mountainous country to Van Wert.
Tuesday, October 7, 2014
Etowah Bridge, Friday, Oct. 7. Called up early to go aforaging. Swallowed a hasty breakfast and started while it was yet dark, but did not start from Cartersville till 9 A. M. The train consisted of about ninety wagons. After the usual amount of halting, crowding and swearing, by mule drivers and wagon masters, we started west, three armed men to a wagon. Traveled ten miles through much more beautiful country than I expected to find in the Etowah Valley. Saw some palatial mansions with beautiful surroundings. Here our advance saw, or thought they did, “them guerrillas” and they dared not go any farther. Turned out into a field of about four hundred acres, but the corn was very scarce, not having had any care, and choked with weeds. We succeeded in getting half loads. Many returned empty.
Reached camp by 5 P. M. Boys had been at work all day on fort. The Etowah River higher than it has been since we have been here. This morning a large field of driftwood came down, threatening to sweep off the railroad bridge. Displaced several boats and the track sagged about two feet in the center. Pioneers at work all day keeping off the float-wood. Several of our boys went up to Allatoona yesterday. Returned to-day’, having been engaged in dressing wounds, etc. all night. They bring the usual accounts of suffering that follows every battle. Many of the wounded lay out in the cold rain of yesterday. A train loaded with them for Rome, lays at the end of the bridge, failing to cross. The wounded are being transferred to cars on this side by means of ambulances. They must suffer terribly to-night.
Friday, 7th—Weather clear and pleasant. Our division, now the Fourth of the Seventeenth Army Corps, started out to reconnoiter. We went in light marching order without teams or artillery and marching out about twenty miles to the southwest of Marietta came upon the rebels’ pickets, at a place called Powder Springs. We drove them about four miles to the south, they not caring for a fight, and camped for the night. Our division was sent to find out whether or not the rebels are out in force along this road.
Camp near Petersburg, Oct. 7th.
It lacks nine days of four months since I first beheld, through sulphurous smoke and leaden hail, the tall spires of Petersburg. It was the time the Ninth Corps made their first charge and were repulsed. Since that time we have made several advances— always by the left flank—until now we extend from river to river around the city. But we are not discouraged. In fact, we were never one-half so confident as now. We are fulfilling, to the letter, the old injunction to “make haste slowly.” Experience tells us the taking of a city, a victory where the enemy, “runs away and lives to fight another day,” only prolongs the contest. Their armies must be destroyed. Grant has hit upon the right plan. What if Copperheads do say “Grant cannot take Petersburg.” We know better. His operations here are but part of a plan that is literally destroying Lee’s army. It embraces Butler, on the James; Sheridan, in the Shenandoah Valley; Sherman, in Georgia. All are acting in concert, controlled by one master spirit, who rules and guides the whole.
For a time I feared Grant had met his match in Lee. But, as the plot thickens and the current of events brings out and develops his deep-laid plans, I see the hoary-headed traitor struggling with desperate but futile energy to disengage himself from the toils of his relentless foe. In speaking of Grant last spring I said, “I suspend judgment for the present.” Since that time he has exhibited qualities that prove him to be, with scarcely a rival, the military genius of the age. We talk of Sherman’s campaign in Georgia; of Grant’s campaign in Virginia; of Sheridan in the Valley; of Mobile and Charleston. There has been but one campaign, and that is Grant’s campaign against the rebellion. The whole—north, south, east and west—had been guided and directed, under God, by his far-seeing mind. I believe we have at last found the man who is capable of directing the energies of this country, and of leading us on to victory and peace.
October 7, 1864.
The Rebels have left the railroad after being whipped by General Corse at Allatoona Pass. The 14th Corps drove them out to Lost Mountain yesterday. No hard fighting. They tore up not more than eight miles of railroad, which will be rebuilt in a very few days.
Deserters report the whole Rebel Army here, but that the ten days’ rations they started with have run out. Other deserters say that their army has started for Nashville, Huntsville, or hell; that they are satisfied they can’t make either of the first named places, and would rather go to Sherman than the last named. It is wonderful what confidence this army has in Sherman. Every man seems to think the idea of these Rebels being able to do us any permanent harm is perfectly preposterous, and all are in the best of spirits. I can’t help thinking that the Rebels must have all cleared out of this vicinity, or else we’d be going for them. Our stock is in too bad condition to follow them far over the, at present, horrible roads. A man rode along on a poor old bone-rack of a horse a while ago. Some wag commenced, “caw,” “caw,” “caw.” The whole camp took it up and for five minutes you would have thought that 10,000 crows were holding a jubilee. Let some one start a squirrel or rabbit and 500 men will be after it in a minute. Old soldiers are just a lot of men with school-boy spirits.
Officers don’t draw meat like the men. I have just had two meals of beef (and no other meat) in the last ten days. All our officers are the same way. It is mostly our own fault.
Friday, October 7. — Wrote to Mr. Caldwell for some money and sent it by Captain Senn. Captain McChesney was sent for by the commandant of the post, and questioned as to any intended outbreak amongst us. As there was none intended, no information could be given. Four cannon were fired towards evening. Some officers from Charleston came by here in wagons about noon. Spent most of the day mending my trousers. Day rainy and cloudy.
October 7 — We renewed our march this morning, still moving down the Valley. We passed through Turleytown, a little hamlet buried in the foothills of North Mountain just above Brock’s Gap. We struck the North Fork of the Shenandoah two miles below Brock’s Gap, then moved down the river to Timberville, a little village six miles west of New Market. At Timberville we left the river, turned to the left, and moved down through a section known in this part of the Shenandoah Valley as the Forest country. We passed through Forestville, struck across fields, and through woods to Mount Clifton. We are camped to-night near Mount Clifton, in Shenandoah County, about six miles northwest of Mount Jackson. We are close to the Yanks now, for our cavalry had a running fight with them this afternoon on the Howard’s Lick pike between Mount Jackson and Mount Clifton. This evening I saw some dead and wounded soldiers dressed in blue. Captain Koontz, a gallant officer of the Seventh Virginia Cavalry, was killed this afternoon. The Yankees are burning all the mills and barns in this part of the Shenandoah Valley; I saw a hundred barns burning to-day. Just at dusk this evening I saw a Federal soldier lying on the field; from all appearances he was mortally wounded. He was piteously lamenting his condition and said, “Oh, I want to see mother; I wish I would have stayed at home.” I wished so too, but I did not let him hear me wish. He was from Vermont.
London, October 7, 1864
I told you last week that I was going down to Shropshire to visit my friend Gaskell. I only returned last night at eight o’clock, and am off again tomorrow to Derbyshire. My visit to Wenlock was very enjoyable. God only knows how old the Abbot’s House is, in which they are as it were picnicing before going to their Yorkshire place for the winter. Such a curious edifice I never saw, and the winds of Heaven permeated freely the roof, not to speak of the leaden windows. We three, Mrs. Gaskell, Gaskell and I, dined in a room where the Abbot or the Prior used to feast his guests; a hall on whose timber roof and great oak rafters, the wood fire threw a red shadow forty feet above our heads. I slept in a room whose walls were all stone, three feet thick, with barred, square Gothic windows and diamond panes; and at my head a small oak door opened upon a winding staircase in the wall, long since closed up at the bottom, and whose purpose is lost. The daws in the early morning woke me up by their infernal chattering around the ruins, and in the evening we sat in the dusk in the Abbot’s own room of state, and there I held forth in grand after-dinner eloquence, all my social, religious and philosophical theories, even in the very holy-of-holies of what was once the heart of a religious community.
Wherever we stepped out of the house, we were at once among the ruins of the Abbey. We dug in the cloisters and we hammered in the cellars. We excavated tiles bearing coats of arms five hundred years old, and we laid bare the passages and floors that had been three centuries underground. Then we rambled over the Shropshire hills, looking in on farmers in their old kitchens, with flitches of bacon hanging from the roof, and seats in the chimney corners, and clean brick floors, and an ancient blunderbuss by the fire-place. And we drove through the most fascinating parks and long ancient avenues, with the sun shining on the deer and the pheasants, and the “rabbit fondling his own harmless face.” And we picnicked at the old Roman city of Uriconium, in the ruins of what was once the baths; and eat partridge and drank Château Leoville, where once a great city flourished, of which not one line of record remains, but with which a civilisation perished in this country.
7th. Friday. Daylight advanced the line of pickets. Saw reb. Division massed, 2nd Brigade in rear. Attacked and broken in the P. M. 1st Brigade checked the rebs, lost some forges and sheep and cattle. Col. Pennington took command today. Camped at Columbia Furnace.
October 7th.—Bright and beautiful.
The government, after giving the news from Georgia, position of Hood, to the press, suppressed it. It is well, perhaps, not to permit Grant, who sees our papers daily, to know what we are doing there.
There are rumors of fighting to-day near Chaffin’s Bluff, but we hear no cannon, except an occasional shell at long intervals.
Gen. Bragg is now in hot water with the Quartermaster-General, for ordering the trial of Lieut.-Col. Cone and Major Maynard, Quartermasters, in the city, for alleged violation of law and orders.
Gen. Preston is away again or sick, and Col. August and Lieut.-Col. Lay are again signing papers at “the Bureau,” as “acting superintendents.” Bragg may aim another bomb at the refractory concern.
