Friday, November 18. —Received a letter from Hannah, dated October 23. Contained news of Colonel Amory’s death. Charlie had four letters. All came by way of Charleston. Also received a letter from Mr. Kidder in reference to my exchange. Several officers who escaped from the prison camp were brought in here last night. Among them was .Major Reynolds of the 14th New York Heavy Artillery. Gave us an interesting account of their adventures.
Tuesday, November 18, 2014
Springs, 40 miles from Macon,
November 18, 1864.
We got here at noon but will wait until to-morrow, I understand, for the 3d and 4th Divisions to lay a pontoon bridge across the Ocmulgee river. This has been a summer resort of some note. From 800 to 1,000 people congregate here. The spring is a little stream of water not larger than your finger, which runs from the rock at the rate of a gallon a minute. It is sulphur water with some other ingredient that gives it a very disagreeable ordor. This is quite a romantic place. Foraged some peach brandy, which was destroyed.
Friday, 18th—We were on the road by 8 o’clock and after marching ten miles, lay by until 10 p. m., when we were ordered to fall in again. After an hour’s march we came to the Ockmulgee river, which we crossed by pontoons at Ockmulgee Mills. The entire Seventeenth Corps came together again here and at 1 o’clock in the night we went into bivouac on the east side of the river. The Fifteenth Corps crossed the river by the same pontoon bridge. There is fine water power here and there are large mills. The country is very rough.
November 18th, 1864.
This has been one of the most pleasant days that ever visited this storm-swept world. So soft and balmy—I have not words to describe it; I have almost fallen in love with this Southern climate.
I confess to a feeling of dread when I think of the severity of our Northern winters. The coldest weather we have yet had was only sufficient to cause a light frost. And yet I actually suffered with cold before! had a fireplace in my house.
The house I built a few days ago was comfortable, but rather small. I could not build larger, for I had not the strength to draw the logs on my back. Fortune has been kind to me, as usual.
Today I moved into a large, new house, all complete. It happened in this wise. The regiment had been at work at the field hospital and for General Wilcox, which made it impossible to build their own houses without resorting to strategy. The day before yesterday a squad of men from our company was detailed, as usual, to cut logs for the General’s stables. On reaching the woods, Charlie Groesbeck and William Jones separated from the squad and went to work on their own account. By 11 o’clock their timber was cut; how to get it drawn was the next question. Luck favored them. A teamster came along looking for a load of brush that was to have been cut by— somebody. The boys told him they “guessed” they were the men, but the brush were not all cut. If he would draw a load of logs they had cut, the brush would be ready on his return. He consented to the arrangement, and the thing was done. The next day they built their house, and, when completed, invited me to share its comforts.
General Burnside has been here. He had hardly arrived before the air was filled with rumors, all looking to a removal from this department. One newspaper has it the Seventeenth is to be detached from the corps to guard prisoners at Elmira, New York.
I was the recipient of a handsome present last night —a portfolio bound in morocco. The donor is W. B. Jones, one of my tent mates.
Charles Francis Adams, Jr., to his father
Quincy, November 18, 1864
The management of our finances now seems to me not only the greatest but the most inviting field for usefulness which this country affords. Are you acquainted with the present financial temper of the country? Do you know what the present condition of our finances is? My opinion is n’t worth much, but the subject is one which interests me and, as I have lots of time, I’ll write my impressions. In the first place, our people are now taxed to death, not for revenue, but for currency. A dollar represents fifty cents in goods. Bitter experience has taught them that it is better to pay an enormous tax for revenue and more for currency, than only heavy taxes for revenue and half their incomes for currency. I have one thousand dollars income. I could better pay $250 for revenue if a dollar was worth a hundred cents, than nothing at all with gold at 230. This an intelligent people begins to see. In other words a nation has at last learned that paper-money is not wealth and that, after a certain point, the best way to raise revenue is to put your hand in your pocket and pull out the coin. I want to see some bold, obstinate, common-sensed financier just follow out those principles and proceed to regulate our Treasury. If such a one would now take his stand and declare that he would have a dollar a dollar and not borrow another cent, but carry on the war by taxes and taxes only; that he would not ruin the nation by discounting its paper with 7.3 interest at sixty per cent off; that he might tax us half our incomes, but he would make the other half gold; that he would not borrow another dollar now except at par — such a man might now be forced out of office, but his day would come and the country would return to him sooner or later. I think he would carry it through now. They say we now raise $600,000,000 a year. If so, this in gold would carry on the war. The trouble is we pay it out in depreciated currency for every munition of war. Prices once broken down to gold rates, our present taxes apparently would suffice. I believe the country would cheerfully pay the sum necessary to take the Treasury out of the market as a borrower, and if we contracted no more loans the greenback currency would surely rise in value without another effort of the Government. We should indeed have to face a currency contraction and commercial crisis; but surely that would be better now than presently and amid the strain of war could most readily be met and overcome.
This last election has given me a new and almost unbounded faith in the faculty of a free and intelligent people to manage their own affairs. It was conducted with so much temper and moderation, the issues were so fully discussed and, on the successful side, so wholly without clap-trap and buncomb, it has convinced me that our people, to come to correct conclusions, need only full and able discussions, time to think and honest and clear thinkers to guide. The popular mind is now ripe for a correct solution of our financial questions. Up to within a short time people had a sort of blind belief in what Mill calls “currency juggles “; they thought that certain men could manufacture wealth out of printed paper; that national expenditure, credit and debt, in some mysterious way, differed from individual debt, credit and expenditure, and was subject to other and then unknown laws. A fearful expenditure and bitter experience have now made them expect some humbug in all that and to me it seems that they only need to have correct principles bluntly stated to redeem at once past blunders and present troubles. A year ago they were not ready for this and the man who had proposed it would have failed to convince. Now any man who does it will win everlasting honor.
The country begins to suspect that a nation no more than a man can submit to unlimited shaves on his paper and that after a certain point it is true economy to return to cash payments and that to do this you must spend only your income. The Government in this war has never had faith enough in the virtue and intelligence of the people. They have been afraid of their own measures and the people are to-day more willing to honor drafts and taxes than the Government is to impose them. The result has been most disastrous. To carry on this war we need not more than 400,000 men and $600,000,000 a year really furnished. By our timid system of drafts, with their quotas, and credits, and balances, and one year men and all that trash, and our ruinous system of loans and paper money, we have terrified the people by calling on them in one year for 1,000,000 men and we have made the war cost them $1,200,000,000, all because our rulers either don’t know how or dare not tell the truth.
I hope the Government now will come out fair and square and say: “This war costs now so much in men and so much in money as we now carry it on: as it might be carried on it would cost so much. Currency juggles and draft juggles are only swindles. Men and money are the sinews of war. Raised directly, they cost so much; raised indirectly, so much. All that cost in any case must come from you, but that difference is what you must pay if you want to cheat yourself into a pleasing idea that the cost does n’t come out of you but out of somebody else. These are the principles on which finances and military strength depend and three years demonstrate their truth. Now choose ye!” These things need to be brought before the people and the Cabinet should do it, for the President, we know, is not equal to it. What a superb thing it would be to have some man at the head of affairs who could now lead this people, in the midst of the trial and excitement of war, back to correct principles; leading them of their own free will, and simply by pointing out to them their errors as proven by results in their own recent experience.
November 18th.—Bright, calm, and pleasant.
All quiet below, save our bombardment of Dutch Gap Canal.
The Senate passed a resolution yesterday, calling on the President for a statement of the number of exemptions granted by the Governors. This will, perhaps, startle Governor Smith, of Virginia, who has already kept out of the army at least a thousand.
Perhaps it will hit Governor Brown, of Georgia, also; but Sherman will hit him hardest. He must call out all his fighting people now, or see his State ravaged with impunity.
Both Houses of Congress sit most of the time in secret session, no doubt concocting strong measures under the influence of the existing crisis. Good news only can throw open the doors, and restore the hilarity of the members. When not in session, they usually denounce the President; in session, they are wholly subservient to him.
Hon. R. L. Montague has written to the Secretary of War, on behalf of the entire Virginia delegation, requesting a suspension of the impressment of slaves until further legislation by Congress; what that legislation will be, the President might tell, if he would.
A dispatch from Gen. Wheeler, dated to-day, 12 miles from Forsyth, states that Sherman advances by the most direct route toward Macon, Ga.
My wife presented me to-day an excellent pocket-handkerchief, my old ones being honey-combed and unfit for another washing. Upon inquiry (since the cost of a single handkerchief is now $20), I ascertained it to be a portion of one of my linen shirts bought in London in 1846.
We have now 200 pounds of flour in the house; 1 bushel meal; 1 bushel sweet potatoes; 1 bushel Irish potatoes; 3 half pecks white beans; 4 pumpkins; 10 pounds beef; 2 pounds butter, and 3 pounds sugar, with salt, etc. This seems like moderate stores for a family of seven, but it is a larger supply than we ever had before, and will suffice for a month. At the market price, they would cost $620. Add to this 1½ loads coal and a quarter cord of wood—the first at $75, the last at $80—the total is $762.50. This sum in ordinary times, and in specie, would subsist my family twelve months.
18th. Friday. Nettleton returned. Letters from home. God bless the good friends. Commissions for boys. 1st Lt. for me. Letter from Roxena.
Nashville, Friday, Nov. 18. Lay abed this morning as long as possible. Last night, was a miserable night to stand guard. Cold rain fell very heavily all the time I was out, feet perfectly wet, in consequence of which I caught a large amount of cold. Settled in my head in the shape of catarrh. To-day was not an exception to the general rule, so of course it rained in doors as well as out, mud unfathomable on all sides, and we spent the day in the most comical manner. Cheerfulness like a bright angel, made us forget the disagreeable, and we sung (or rather bawled), read, talked, laughed and scuffled by turns with an occasional recess “to rake shoulder straps” in general. And I don’t think it is misplaced. Here we are in Nashville where an abundance of everything is to be had. Thousands of feet of government lumber lying in the pile, thousands more of employees at work daily in getting out more, besides hundreds of vacant houses crumbling to ruin untenanted and unowned, which we would soon be able to convert into comfortable quarters. But no, the officers will not permit it, and here we are left to the inclemencies of the wet season, on the wet ground, wood to warm our chilled limbs even refused us. I trust that my patriotism is now as bright as ever, and I am willing and ready to undergo any hardships for the sake of my bleeding and torn country, but this is unnecessary and too much. They (the officers) are cozily quartered with some private family, toast their feet and drink their wines without ever a thought of us, who are engaged in a common cause with them. The world will do homage to them, the future historian may paint in glowing pictures their career, but the private soldier that bears uncomplainingly these abuses, and seeks naught but to do his duty, deserves as rich a reward; aye, and the God of Justice will reward each according to his merit. Received a mail which was duly appreciated.
November 18,1864.
Slept very little last night. Went out doors several times and could see large fires like burning buildings. Am I not in the hands of a merciful God who has promised to take care of the widow and orphan?
Sent off two of my mules in the night. Mr. Ward and Frank [a slave] took them away and hid them. In the morning took a barrel of salt, which had cost me two hundred dollars, into one of the black women’s gardens, put a paper over it, and then on the top of that leached ashes. Fixed it on a board as a leach tub, daubing it with ashes [the old-fashioned way of making lye for soap]. Had some few pieces of meat taken from my smoke-house carried to the Old Place [a distant part of the plantation] and hidden under some fodder. Bid them hide the wagon and gear and then go on plowing. Went to packing up mine and Sadai’s clothes. I fear that we shall be homeless.
The boys came back and wished to hide their mules. They say that the Yankees camped at Mr. Gibson’s last night and are taking all the stock in the county. Seeing them so eager, I told them to do as they pleased. They took them off, and Elbert [the black coachman] took his forty fattening hogs to the Old Place Swamp and turned them in.
We have done nothing all day—that is, my people have not. I made a pair of pants for Jack [a slave]. Sent Nute [a slave] up to Mrs. Perry’s on an errand. On his way back, he said, two Yankees met him and begged him to go with them. They asked if we had livestock, and came up the road as far as Mrs. Laura Perry’s. I sat for an hour expecting them, but they must have gone back. Oh, how I trust I am safe! Mr. Ward is very much alarmed.
