24th.—A little skirmish to-day, amounting to almost nothing. A party of four or five hundred went out in the morning, came upon the enemy’s pickets, and firing on them, drove them in. Then, on returning, our four or five hundred found five men in the field, drawing manure, and well armed with shovels and dung-forks. We took them all prisoners, without losing a man! Wonder, if by to-morrow, this cannot be magnified into another “Great Victory,” to offset the terrible disaster at Edward’s Ferry. This “Grand Army of the Potomac” is a great field in which to win glory. Victories make glory, and victories with us are very cheap.
Monday, October 24, 2011
Thursday, 24th—The flag was run up at half mast today, in honor of the death of Colonel Wentz, of the Second Iowa Infantry. Clothing and arms for our regiment have arrived at Davenport. The boys are glad to know that our regiment is to be equipped before leaving the State—ours is to be the first so equipped.
24th. Rather strange life—smoking and such talk!
October 24th.—The heaviest blow which has yet been inflicted on the administration of justice in the United States, and that is saying a good deal at present, has been given to it in Washington. The judge of whom I wrote a few days ago in the habeas corpus case, has been placed under military arrest and surveillance by the Provost-Marshal of the city, a very fit man for such work, one Colonel Andrew Porter. The Provost Marshal imprisoned the attorney who served the writ, and then sent a guard to Mr. Merrick’s house, who thereupon sent a minute to his brother judges the day before yesterday stating the circumstances, in order to show why he did not appear in his place on the bench. The Chief Judge Dunlop and Judge Morsell thereupon issued their writ to Andrew Porter greeting, to show cause why an attachment for contempt should not be issued against him for his treatment of Judge Merrick. As the sharp tongues of women are very troublesome, the United States officers have quite little harems of captives, and Mrs. Merrick has just been added to the number. She is a Wickliffe of Kentucky, and has a right to martyrdom. The inconsistencies of the Northern people multiply ad infinitum as they go on. Thus at Hatteras they enter into terms of capitulation with officers signing themselves of the Confederate States Army and Confederate States Navy; elsewhere they exchange prisoners; at New York they are going through the farce of trying the crew of a C. S. privateer, as pirates engaged in robbing on the high seas, on “the authority of a pretended letter of marque from one Jefferson Davis.” One Jeff Davis is certainly quite enough for them at present.
Colonel and Senator Baker was honoured by a ceremonial which was intended to be a public funeral, rather out of compliment to Mr. Lincoln’s feelings, perhaps, than to any great attachment for the man himself, who fell gallantly fighting near Leesburg. There is need for a republic to contain some elements of an aristocracy if it would make that display of pomp and ceremony which a public funeral should have to produce effect. At all events there should be some principle of reverence in the heads and hearts of the people, to make up for other deficiencies in it as a show, or a ceremony. The procession down Pennsylvania Avenue was a tawdry, shabby string of hack carriages, men in light coats and white hats following the hearse, and three regiments of foot soldiers, of which one was simply an uncleanly, unwholesome looking rabble. The President, in his carriage, and many of the ministers and senators, attended also, and passed through unsympathetic lines of people on the kerbstones, not one of whom raised his hat to the bier as it passed, or to the President, except a couple of Englishmen and myself who stood in the crowd, and that proceeding on our part gave rise to a variety of remarks among the bystanders. But as the band turned into Pennsylvania Avenue, playing something like the minuet de la cour in Don Giovanni, two officers in uniform came riding up in the contrary direction; they were smoking cigars; one of them let his fall on the ground, the other smoked lustily as the hearse passed, and reining up his horse, continued to puff his weed under the nose of President, ministers, and senators, with the air of a man who was doing a very soldierly correct sort of thing.
Whether the President is angry as well as grieved at the loss of his favourite or not, I cannot affirm, but he is assuredly doing that terrible thing which is called putting his foot down on the judges; and he has instructed Andrew Porter not to mind the writ issued yesterday, and has further instructed the United States Marshal, who has the writ in his hands to serve on the said Andrew, to return at to the court with the information that Abraham Lincoln had suspended the writ of habeas corpus in cases relating to the military.
THURSDAY 24
This has been a bright cool day with a bracing north wind. The Event of the day has been the funeral of Col Baker. There was a great display of Military and a long procession reaching a mile or more. Wife and all the family went. I walked down to the Ave and saw the procession pass from the “Kirkwood House.” I was an hour or so at the Pat office. Rcd a letter from Lieut Swan dated at the Camp near Alexandria. No important news from up the River, down it is closed by Batteries.
______
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.
Thursday, 24th.—An account reached us to-day of a severe fight last Monday (21st), at Leesburg—a Manassas fight in a small way. The Federals, under General Stone, came in large force to the river; they crossed in the morning 8,000 or 10,000 strong, under command of Colonel Baker, late Senator from Oregon. They came with all the pomp and circumstance of glorious war, and rushed on as if to certain victory over our small force. “But when the sun set, where were they?” They were flying back to Maryland, that her hills might hide and her rocks shelter them. They crowded into their boats, on their rafts; multitudes plunged into the water and swam over; any thing, any way, that would bear them from “old Virginia’s shore.” Our men were in hot pursuit, firing upon them incessantly, until the blue waters of the Potomac ran red with blood. It was a “famous victory,” as old Caspar would say, and I am thankful enough for it; for if they come to kill us, we must kill or drive them back. But it is dreadful to think of the dead and the dying, the widows and the orphans. Mr. William Randolph, who brought us this account, says there were between five and six hundred prisoners, a number of wounded, and 400 killed and drowned—among them Colonel Baker killed. They had no business here on such an errand ; but who, with a human heart, does not feel a pang at the thought that each one had somebody to grieve for him— somebody who will look long for the return of each one of the four hundred! The account goes on to state with exultation, that we lost but twenty-seven killed. There are but twenty-seven bereaved households in the length and breadth of this Confederacy from this one fight—a great disparity, and very few considering the violence of the fight; but it is difficult to think with composure of the lacerated hearts in those twenty-seven homes!
OCTOBER 24TH.—We made a narrow escape; at least, we have a respite. If the Yankee army had advanced with its 200,000 men, they would not have encountered more than 70,000 fighting Confederate soldiers between the Potomac and Richmond. It was our soldiers (neither the officers nor the government) that saved us; and they fought contrary to rule, and even in opposition to orders. Of course our officers at Leesburg did their duty manfully; nevertheless, the soldiers had determined to fight, officers or no officers.
But as the man in the play said, “it will suffice.” The Yankees are a calculating people: and if 1500 Mississippians and Virginians at Leesburg were too many for 8000 Yankees, what could 200,000 Yankees do against 70,000 Southern soldiers? It made them pause, and give up the idea of taking Richmond this year. But the enemy will fight better every successive year; and this should not be lost sight of. They, too, are Anglo-Saxons.
October 24.—Mr. Shufeldt, U. S. Consul at Havana, telegraphed to Capt Wilkes, of the U. S. sloop San Jacinto, at Trinidad, to bring his vessel to Havana, in view of the numerous Confederate vessels finding refuge there, and remaining there unmolested to ship cargoes and return; perhaps, also, in view of the presence there of the rebel commissioners Mason and Slidell, en route for Europe.—National Intelligencer, November 1.
—An interesting correspondence between Gen. Mclernand and the “Confederate” Gen. Polk, on the subject of a recent exchange of prisoners, was made public.—(Doc. 105.)
—Capt. H. L. Shields, of Bennington, Vt., was arrested, charged with having carried on treasonable correspondence with the rebels. He obstinately denied the charges made against him, and promised to bring sufficient evidence of their falsity. He was conveyed to Fort Lafayette. Capt. Shields graduated at West Point in 1841, served ten years in the regular army, and was twice brevetted for gallantry in the Mexican War.—N. Y. Times, October 28.
—President Lincoln suspended the writ of habeus corpus for the District of Columbia. The judges and lawyers had made themselves so troublesome by their officious interference with military affairs that this had become necessary. —N. Y. Evening Post, October 24.
—The steamer Salvor, captured whilst attempting to run the blockade into Tampa Bay, Florida, arrived at New York.—Western Virginia almost unanimously voted in favor of a division of the State.—The funeral of Col. Edward D. Baker, who was killed at the battle of Ball’s Bluff, took place at Washington, D.C. The remains were deposited in the congressional burying ground.—Reports were circulated throughout the country that Gen. Banks had been killed and his army slaughtered, that Gen. Sickles’ brigade had suffered a similar fate, and that the Confederates had crossed the Potomac, both above and below Washington.— Baltimore American, October 25.
—This night a skirmish occurred between Gen. Ward’s pickets and a scouting party of about one hundred rebels in Green County, to the southwest of Campbellsville, Kentucky. The captain of pickets unfortunately was taken prisoner, but the National forces suffered no other loss, though there were several of the rebels killed and wounded. A Tennesseean who was attached to the Federal forces killed two of them.—Louisville Journal, October 26.
