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

Thursday, December 18, 2014

Colonel Lyon’s Letters.

 

Dec. 18, 1864.—Some time or other you will get a batch of letters from me which I have written during our blockade. In them you will find a history of our movements for a month.

Well, tonight we got orders from General Thomas to go back and reoccupy the railroad to Decatur; and tomorrow we expect to leave here for Huntsville. We do not anticipate any resistance, and shall probably get there on Tuesday, as we go by railroad.

The rebels occupy Decatur in some force and we may have to go down and clean them out before we settle down anywhere. We get with the orders to move the news of the glorious victory over Hood, telegraphed to General Granger by General Whipple (Mrs. Sandford’s brother), who is General Thomas’ chief of staff. Hood is badly damaged and will probably be ruined before he can get his army off—but you already know all about this. You probably will not hear from me again for a week, as communications will be rather unsettled for awhile longer.

Sunday, December 18th.—Raining.

The old dull sound of bombs down the river. Nothing further from Savannah. It is now believed that the raiders in Western Virginia did not attack Saltville, and that the works are safe. For two days the speculators have been buying salt, and have put up the price to $1.50 per pound. I hope they will be losers. The State distributes salt to-morrow: ten pounds to each member of a family, at 20 cents per pound.

The President’s malady is said to be neuralgia in the head—an evanescent affliction, and by no means considered dangerous. At least such is the experience in my family.

It was amusing, however, to observe the change of manner of the Secretaries and of heads of bureaus toward Vice-President Stephens, when it was feared the President was in extremis. Mr. Hunter, fat as he is, flew about right briskly.

If Savannah falls, our currency will experience another depreciation, and the croaking reconstructionists will be bolder.

The members of the Virginia Assembly propose paying themselves $50 per day!

Congress has not yet passed the act increasing the compensation of members.

Chapin’s Farm, Va., December 18, 1864.

Dear Father:—

A sentence in S’s letter has troubled me considerably lately. He says, “Father is growing old fast. His hair is white as snow, and his old complaint, the diarrhea, is troubling him very much.” Mother had written me that a very good physician there had entirely cured you of that and I was somewhat surprised to hear such news from him. Is this true? I wish you would write me freely about your health and condition, and prospects among your people. I had formed the opinion from the family letters, particularly Mother’s, that you were getting along better there than ever before. I heard of some trouble about a house and of some political difficulties in the church, but I did not suppose these things were serious enough to wear upon your health as some old troubles have done.

Do you make out to live upon your salary these hard times? The family is some smaller with L., E. and me away, and I should judge from reports that S. and C. earned nearly enough to feed and clothe themselves, but with everything you have to buy, at double the old rates, I cannot see how you manage.

Yesterday was my birthday, and I am twenty-five years old. It is time I was a man if ever I am to be one, but there is much of the boy about me yet. Still I dread growing old, and the years fly by all too swiftly. I begin to have that feeling already that I am too old for what I have accomplished and I am looking forward anxiously to know what I shall do when we have peace once more. Till that time my duty is plain, and I do not remember to have had at any time any other purpose than to remain in the army till peace is won, if my life is spared so long. Then comes the thought, what then? The war may last another year and I shall be twenty-six and be ready to start in life for myself, with no capital but a small stock of brains. Sometimes, when I think of these things, I wonder if I can have missed it in giving these four starting years to my country. There is Chapman, who was my class and roommate during my last term at school. We were then as nearly on a par in almost all respects as could be. Both sons of poor ministers with ourselves to depend on. He pursued the course I had marked out for myself, went down to Ohio teaching, and then to college, and he has worked his way into his senior year. He has spent three months in the army and we have maintained a correspondence all the time. Next year he will graduate and marry and settle down to law. He says he envies me my record of the past four years, but I rather think it is his friendly style of fame, for he had as fair a chance to make that record as I. Now is he better off than I? My spirit would hardly brook the thought in coming years that while other young men were giving their time to their country I was giving mine to myself, and no doubt the man who has fought this war through will receive from the community all due honor, but honor is not going to support him, and what is, is a serious question. Another serious question is at what age can I marry? Very few young men set out with the intention to remain single and I am not among the few, but I have always thought I would not marry till I had something to support a wife on, either money, or money and educated brains. I have a horror of being the head of a poverty-stricken family. Now I have given up my hopes of a college education. It is too late, and my education must be such as I am getting now, and I am not sure but it is better so. Some hold the opinion that a young man can do better on the same means with a wife than without—that the right sort of wife is not an expense but a help to him. I want your opinion about that in my own case.

December 18,1864.

Merry Christmas to all.

Our new school-house is now being hurried forward pretty fast, and we hope to get in by the first of the year. How happy we shall be, nobody can tell who has not taught in a school where he or she had to make herself heard over three other classes reciting in concert, and to discover talkers and idlers among fifty scholars while one hundred and fifty more are shouting lessons, and three other teachers bawling admonitions, instructions, and reproofs. Generally two or more of the babies are squalling from disinclination to remain five hours foodless on very small and tippy laps — their nurses being on benches too high for them and rather careless of infant comfort in their zeal for knowledge. . . . Oh, dear, I am away off! To think of being able to hear directly all these good and stirring things! Phillips Brooks is a fine war-horse, is n’t he? He does n’t seem to be getting spoiled.

I went to-day to see Maum Katie, an old African woman, who remembers worshipping her own gods in Africa, but who has been nearly a century in this country. She is very bright and talkative, and is a great “spiritual mother,” a fortune-teller, or rather prophetess, and a woman of tremendous influence over her spiritual children. I am going to cultivate her acquaintance. I have been sending her medicine for a year nearly, and she “hangs upon top me,” refusing all medicine but mine. I never saw her till to-day, and she lives not a stone’s throw off, so you may guess how hurried I am.

Sunday, December 11,1864.

To-morrow I am going to “The Oaks.” I hear that Aunt Phyllis is dying and I shall go to see her and take her some sugar. … It is piping cold to-night — blowing great guns, but Rina made us up a splendid fire and we sit enjoying it and enjoying, too, writing home. . .

The people come very often for us to write letters for them and we have fun doing it. One woman for whom Fanny Murray was writing requested her to end the letter by saying, “Please excuse the writing, for my pen is very bad.”

The letters reach us very late and the papers and magazines later still, but I hope to get them, and we generally do, in time.

Charles Francis Adams, Jr., to his father, U.S. Minister to the U.K.

Camp of the 5th Mass. Cav’y
Point Lookout, Md., December 18, 1864

I did however meet Wilson [in Washington] and some of Grant’s staff, and picked up some reliable military news which it is my object now to let you have. Wilson was in a state of great excitement over the Wilmington expedition and “confidentially” told me, as he was telling every one else, how two hundred tons of powder were going to blow all Wilmington and its forts high and dry; how Butler had 20,000 picked men, including Weitzel’s black division; and how Grant had told him that, for assaulting works, black troops were inferior to none, if indeed not the best in the world. All that he had to say, however, you will get with its results in the papers. I met at the same time, however, Colonel Sharpe, chief of secret information on Grant’s staff and an old acquaintance of mine. I told him I wanted material for a letter to you and then had a long talk with him. All that he tells me is reliable. In answer to my questions he told me, that Lee had now 55,000 men in Richmond and that Grant, now that Butler was gone, confronted him with 75,000. Lee is so “dug-in” that Grant cannot assault him and he has not sufficient preponderance of force to send a suitable moveable column round into his rear. Lee is hard up for supplies. The Danville road is used only for Army supplies and on it they bring in about forty-five carloads a day, and the balance needed for the Army has been waggoned round our flank from Weldon. The citizens of Richmond depend wholly for supplies on the Central Railroad and hence the absolute necessity of Lee’s holding the valley. On hand in Richmond there are about fourteen days’ supplies and this amount cannot be increased. Meanwhile our friends in Richmond inform Sharpe that the rebel rolling stock is so reduced that on the Danville road they have some twenty-five engines and are never able to keep more than five in running order at any time; and they further say that if we can destroy the Central Railroad for thirty miles thoroughly, the material to repair the damage cannot be obtained in the South and Richmond must starve. Meanwhile Lee has sent two Divisions to oppose Sherman and replaced them by two small Divisions from Early, and Grant within forty-eight hours had ordered Sheridan to attack Early and, if successful, to try and press down and seize the Central Railroad. Meanwhile Grant, Sharpe says, considers that the Army of the Potomac has done its work for the year and that now it will observe Lee, and his (Grant’s) winter occupation will be to take Savannah, Charleston and Wilmington, shut the confederates up, and organize a cooperative force to overwhelm Lee in Richmond in the spring, should he remain there. But he does not believe that he can remain there. Said Sharpe: “A few days ago I was reading him my letters from Richmond and expressed my belief that Lee must dig out during the winter. You know how Grant sits and lets you talk and usually expresses no opinion? Then, however, he quickly looked up and said, ‘Do you think so, colonel? Well, I think so too.'”

We then went on to the constitution of Lee’s Army and in reply to my questions he told me: “Lee’s present 55,000 is not at all the old material. It is all that he can rake and scrape — clerks, Government employees, detailed men and all. Of his old fighting stock he has about 22,000 left. Those men we must kill before the country can have peace. They are old soldiers and fierce slave-holders. Those men have got to be used up.” For the rest, he told me Lee’s Army does not amount to much. All the regiments from the South are maddened at being kept in Virginia while Sherman is loose at their homes. Accordingly the desertions come in about thirty a day from Georgians, Floridians and Mississippians. “Now,” said Sharpe, “Lee’s difficulty is this: Virginia has raised sixty-two regiments; of these Lee has in his Army fifty-five, and the rest of his Army is largely made up of North Carolinians. If he gives up Virginia and North Carolina, we shall then get the soldiers from those states, and those are the men he can’t lose.”

I asked him about Lee’s means of recruiting his Army. He told me he had none; our armies overran the South and no more men were to be had. “As to their arming the negroes,” he said, “that’s out of the question. In the first place, let me tell you, in two years I have examined thousands of our men who have escaped from them to us, and I never yet heard of the first case where a black man could n’t be relied on to help them escape, and if they put arms in their hands, by —, those devils would paddle over to us so quick they could n’t catch them. Besides this arming the blacks would just disarm the 22,000 fierce rebels that Lee has left, for those are the remains of the men who fought for slavery.”

Grant he assured me was now in excellent spirits. He wants more men, but he considers that, except in his present defences, Lee has n’t got one week’s fight left in him. Sherman has demonstrated that the rebellion is a shell. Thomas’ victory leaves Lee only to contend with, and Lee’s destruction is a question only of material and time, unless he leaves Virginia and retreats into the Gulf states. There he might yet, by rallying around his Army the remnant of Hood’s, make a new front. Accordingly it is just as well to prevent his getting out of Virginia. Of forage, the enemy has none. Their cavalry has been sent down dismounted to Georgia. Of iron they have been so short as to be unable to manufacture shot requiring to be made of malleable iron. Finally, said he, “Lee can keep his Army just where it is, but he can’t attack, nor can he fight a battle. Victory or defeat would be alike ruinous. As for Hood, they’ve got to get rid of him anyhow; for even if he wins, he is killing the rebellion by his very loss of men.” The Army of the Potomac, he told me, was sadly reduced from what we had once known. “But people say it has accomplished nothing! This year in ruining itself in nine pitched battles, it ruined Lee and one week’s more fighting would have left him nothing to fight with. Meanwhile Sherman’s Army is intact, and Thomas has made a new Army which can not only hold Hood, but has destroyed him.”

Thus, you see, I have cast for you the military horoscope. What I have told you, you may rely upon, as it was told me by a man as well informed as Grant himself, and from it you may safely draw your inferences of the future. Charleston is left to Sherman, and Butler, if successful, is to press into the interior and operate on Lee’s communications on one side, while Sheridan presses them from the other — the Army of the Potomac meanwhile watching him in his works. . . .

Camp Russell, Virginia, December 18, 1864.
Sunday morning before breakfast.

Dear Mother: — We have as yet received no orders as to winter quarters. I begin to suspect I shall not get home during the holidays.

We are feeling very happy over the good news from the other armies. Salutes were fired yesterday and the day before in all our camps in honor of General Thomas’ victory at Nashville.

We are living on the fat of the land now. The sutlers are now again allowed to come to the front and they bring all manner of eatables, wholesome and otherwise, but chiefly otherwise.

I wish you could visit our camps. I know what you would exclaim on coming into my quarters, “Why, Rutherford, how comfortably you are fixed. I should like to live with you myself.” I am getting books and reading matter of all sorts against rainy weather. Unless the weather is atrocious, I take a ride daily of a couple of hours or more. We yesterday had an inspection of my brigade. The Twenty-third was in the best condition. Notwithstanding our heavy losses, we have managed to get so many new men during the summer that the regiment is about as large as it was in the spring. It is larger than it was at this time last year.

A large number of men and officers who fell into Rebel hands, wounded, are now coming back, having been exchanged. They are all happy to be back and full of determination to fight it out.

I have been made a brigadier-general, but it is not yet officially announced. It was on the recommendation of Generals Crook and Sheridan.

Affectionately, your son,

R.

Mrs. Sophia Hayes.

Fort Gillem, Sunday, Dee. 18. Rained all night last night, very warm and oppressive. We lay in our new bunk, a decided improvement on lying on the wet ground. Griff and I visited a squad of 2,800 prisoners this morning, of which Nashville is nearly full. They look as well as any I have ever seen, clothing not as bad as I expected to see. Could not converse with them for the guards. Our little boy with Unions sold out before he reached us, so we have not the details of yesterday’s work. Our headquarters are at Franklin. They must be skedaddling very fast. Moved the picket rope as our horses were fast disappearing in the mud, which is beyond grammatical comparison. This morning everybody is all mud from head to foot. We eat it and drink it, and the air we breathe is muddy.

18th. Sunday. A good letter from Prof. Peck. A beautiful picture of Melissa and the darling baby (Carrie Nettleton Thurber). Letter from home. Wrote to the Prof.

From his letter to Prof. Peck.

Everybody in the 2nd Ohio is familiar with the name and services of Prof. Peck, of Oberlin, the man who has always done so much for the Ohio soldiers, both the sick and well, and who had an article in the paper a short time ago about the 2nd Ohio.

The boys are delighted with your praise of the Regiment. I have told a good many what you wrote in regard to us. All say, “Well, if he says that he does not know a regiment which has done better than ours, we ought to feel proud, for he is well acquainted with Ohio troops.”

Our Regiment has been sadly depleted during the campaign. It has not been recruited, but we hope to have it filled up, if another call for troops shall be made. Perhaps a portion of the records of Company C, with which I am serving will interest you. On the 1st day of May, 1864, the Company left Washington with forty-eight men, all told. During the summer, seven recruits joined it, making a total of fifty-five. From May 1st until this date, the losses foot up as follows: Five killed—all brave and good—thirty wounded and seventeen missing. Today we number for duty, eleven enlisted men, every one good soldiers.

Theodore is robust and always ready for duty. He is well-fashioned for a soldier, having a hardy constitution and a jolly temperament. He was pleased to be remembered by you.

Yesterday I received a beautiful Christmas gift from my friends, Will Hudson, Fred Allen, Delos Haynes and Charley Fairchild, a pair of shoulder-straps. The Col. received a very cunning picture today of Sister Melissa, with her little treasure Carrie in her arms.

The glorious news from Gen’ls Thomas and Sherman has just been read to us. We gave three hearty cheers. We hope that the end is not far distant.

Yours truly,                        

Lumen H. Tenney,

Capt. 2nd O. V. V. C.

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Sunday, 18th.—Camped near Columbia.