JULY 1ST.—To-day Gen. Magruder led his division into action at Malvern Hill, it is said, contrary to the judgment of other commanders. The enemy’s batteries commanded all the approaches in most advantageous position, and fearful was the slaughter. A wounded soldier, fresh from the field to-night, informs me that our loss in killed in this engagement will amount to as many as have fallen in all the others combined.
Sunday, July 1, 2012
Tuesday, July 1st.
I heard such a good joke last night! If I had belonged to the female declaiming club, I fear me I would have resigned instantly through mere terror. (Thank Heaven, I don’t!) These officers say the women talk too much, which is undeniable. They then said, they meant to get up a sewing society, and place in it every woman who makes herself conspicuous by her loud talking about them. Fancy what a refinement of torture! But only a few would suffer; the majority would be only too happy to enjoy the usual privilege of sewing societies, slander, abuse, and insinuations. How some would revel in it. The mere threat makes me quake! If I could so far forget my dignity, and my father’s name, as to court the notice of gentlemen by contemptible insult, etc., and if I should be ordered to take my seat at the sewing society —!!! I would never hold my head up again! Member of a select sewing circle! Fancy me! (I know “there is never any gossip in our society, though the one over the way gets up dreadful reports”; I have heard all that, but would rather try neither.) Oh, how I would beg and plead! Fifty years at Fort Jackson, good, kind General Butler, rather than half an hour in your sewing society! Gentle, humane ruler, spare me and I split my throat in shouting “Yankee Doodle” and “Hurrah for Lincoln!” Any, every thing, so I am not disgraced! Deliver me from your sewing society, and I’ll say and do what you please!
Butler told some of these gentlemen that he had a detective watching almost every house in town, and he knew everything. True or not, it looks suspicious. We are certainly watched. Every evening two men may be seen in the shadow on the other side of the street, standing there until ever so late, sometimes until after we have gone to bed. It may be that, far from home, they are attracted by the bright light and singing, and watch us for their amusement. A few nights ago, so many officers passed and repassed while we were singing on the balcony, that I felt as though our habit of long standing had suddenly become improper. Saturday night, having secured a paper, we were all crowding around, Lilly and I reading every now and then a piece of news from opposite ends of the paper, Charlie, walking on the balcony, found five officers leaning over the fence watching us as we stood under the light, through the open window. Hope they won’t elect me to the sewing society!
Tuesday, 1st—Received orders to cook four days’ rations and be ready to move at a moment’s notice. We had everything in readiness when late in the evening the order was countermanded.
Libby’s Prison, July 1, 1862.
Dear Father, — I was taken by the skirmishers of the 3th Virginia regiment on the morning of last Friday.
I got right in their midst while looking for General Reynolds’s brigade. I am well treated and in good health. There are about 100 of us officers in a room about 70 by 50 feet. Colonels Corcoran and Ely were confined here at one time.
You need not feel at all anxious about me. If you get a good chance, send me $50 in gold and silver, half of each. I have but three cents left, having but a dollar on me when taken.
To Mrs. Lyon.
Camp Clear Creek, Miss., July 1, 1862—We went to Danville, a little huddle of a dozen old houses, four miles south of this place, and the next day went five miles farther south to a small village, Rienzi, where our orders were countermanded, and we returned to Danville. Remained there over night, and came into camp this morning. I have learned that we started for Holly Springs, seventy miles west of here, but a force that preceded us found that we were not needed there, hence the countermand.
There is a rumor here that General Pope, who has been assigned to the command of the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia, is trying to get the Army of the Mississippi transferred to that section. The men all hope it is true and that he will succeed. I think the decisive fight must occur at Richmond, however, before we get there. I doubt whether there is any considerable force of the rebel troops in this section, and I do not expect any more fighting here this summer.
Camp Jones, July 1, 1862. Tuesday. — Cloudy and rainy. Our water on this mountain top is giving out. Avery and I rode six miles towards New River in the rain but could find no good camping ground where water could be had. This rain will perhaps give us enough here again.
Nothing definite from Richmond. There was some fighting and an important change of position on Friday. There are rumors of disaster and also of the burning of Richmond, but telegraphic communication is reported cut off between Washington and McClellan. This is the crisis of the Nation’s destiny. If we are beaten at Richmond, foreign intervention in the form perhaps of mediation is likely speedily to follow. If successful, we are on the sure road to an early subjugation of the Rebels. The suspense is awful. It can’t last long. — Night; raining steadily.
1st. Reveille at three A. M. Started at 4 A. M. Moved 8 miles to where the command from the other way was, at Round Grove, where Coffee had camped. Indians in their natural state encamped there too. Laughable sight. Pleasant day. Cooler and grass good. Saw the Oberlin boys. Letter from Fannie. Rested. Wrote in the evening.
Off Berkley, Harrison’s Bar, James River,
Tuesday, July 1, 1862.
Dear Mother, — We arrived here yesterday to hear the thunder of the battle[1] and to find the army just approaching this landing. Last night it was a verdant shore; to-day it is a dusty plain. The feelings with which we came up the James River I can’t describe, our anxiety, excitement, and breathless desire to know something were so great. Not a vessel was in sight after we left Newport News, except the “Canonicus,” Quartermaster’s Department boat, which was just ahead of us. No one could guess what knowledge any moment might bring to us.
We were just admiring a fine old colonial house, when some one standing in the bows cried out: “I see something white among the trees to the right!” and in a few minutes more we made them out to be army-wagons.
We had met our army! What next were we to learn? Never shall I forget the look of the first officers who came on board, — one a major, the other a chaplain. They were gaunt and haggard, their hair stood out from their heads stiffened with dust and dirt, their faces were nearly black, and to their waists they were literally moulded in Virginia clay. “Oh! what is this?” we cried. “Is it a defeat?” “Defeat! No; we have retreated, but we never turned our backs on them. We have faced and fought and beaten them for five days!”
Just as we arrived, General McClellan came down on the “Galena” to see Colonel Ingalls. Think what a relief it must have been to his anxious mind to learn the perfect success of our removal from White House, and to know that supplies were already here, and following us up the river, for his exhausted army! I saw the gunboat he was on, but I did not see him; and he was gone almost immediately.
The “Spaulding” has just come up the river and gone ahead of us (Miss Whetten and Mrs. Balestier on board); her iron sides can carry her safely past the rifle-pits which line the shore, and Mr. Olmsted thinks her stores may be serviceable higher up. Dr. Jenkins has gone with her to judge for himself. No one can tell what work there is for us; the wounded have not come in.
July 1st.—The march of last night was full of terrible anxiety and danger. We marched through an enemy’s country, pressed by them on all sides, and momentarily expected when passing through some dense pine forest, to be attacked from ambush and cut to pieces, without the chance of a chivalrous fight. This would be murder of the worst kind, and we feared it.
We reached the James River this morning, at Carters’ Neck, just below Malvern Hills, where the army expected to cross at once, and be again on ground of rest and safety. We were allowed three hours to cook, eat and sleep, and again we moved. But instead of crossing, we found ourselves marching directly away from the river, and the roar of artillery ahead told us of more work yet to be done. Our men, who had now for five days been limited to an average of two hours’ rest a day, pressed forward with an alacrity truly astonishing. After a march of about two miles, we halted on the slope of a hill which concealed us from an immense open plain stretching out in our front to Malvern Hills. Here was progressing a battle which will be famed in history, so long as battles are fought on earth. I doubt whether one so bloody, in proportion to numbers, or so obstinately contested, has been fought since the invention of gunpowder. Here Hooker, and Kearney, and Heintzleman, and, I hope, Porter, (though I have heard hints of his misbehaving) and Stevens, with others, have gained imperishable renown. Our Division was drawn up in line on the slope of the hill referred to, just so as to be concealed by its brow from the plain in front, yet so near as to perceive the advance of an enemy approaching over it, and here we lay all day in reserve, expecting our main body to be driven back on us, as their supports, and the eagerness with which our jaded and worn out troops now watched with a welcome for the foe from which we had been so long flying, is to me as astonishing as it is unaccountable. Here we felt secure, and here we have remained all day, chafing for a part in the deadly conflict going on so near us,
6 P. M.—The battle of Malvern Hill still rages, and what carnage. Hand to hand the fight goes on. The dead and the dying lie heaped together. Charge after charge is made on our artillery, with a demoniac will to take it, if it costs them half their army. Down it mows their charging ranks, till they lie in heaps and rows, from behind which our men fight as securely as if in rifle pits. Nearer and nearer approach their batteries, till the two lines of artillery are mingled into one, but pointing in different directions. In places the wheels of gun carriages of the opposing armies become nearly locked together, and the cannoniers leave their guns and sabre each other in a hand to hand fight. The slaughter is terrible, and to add to the carnage, our gun boats are throwing their murderous missiles with furious effect into the ranks of our enemy. By their shots huge trees are uprooted or torn into shreds, which whip the combatants to death. The combatants seem infatuated with excitement, and the very terror of the scene lashes them into a love of the conflict.
As twilight approaches, the noisy eloquence of battle becomes subdued; at 8 o’clock ’tis hushed, and the enemy is driven and routed. We are too much exhausted to pursue; and, relying on the assurance of our leaders that we are here secure, we at 9 o’clock stretch ourselves at length to take the full enjoyment of a long night’s rest, which our condition so pressingly demands.
![Battle of Malvern hills fou[ght] on Tuesday July 1st in which the federal forces gained a complete victory over the rebel army](https://dotcw.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Battle-of-Malvern-hills-fought-on-Tuesday-July-1st-in-which-the-federal-forces-gained-a-complete.jpg "Battle of Malvern hills fou[ght] on Tuesday July 1st in which the federal forces gained a complete victory over the rebel army")
From Library of Congress:
Title: Battle of Malvern hills fou[ght] on Tuesday July 1st in which the federal forces gained a complete victory over the rebel army, led by Genl’s Magruder and Jackson
- Signed lower right: Alf. R. Waud.
- Title inscribed aboveimage.
- Inscribed upper right: Right wing of the 5th corps Genl Porter.
Part of Morgan collection of Civil War drawings.. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.
Record page for this image: http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2004660457/
