July 12 — To-day we moved again, and we are now camped a quarter mile west of the pike, and two miles below Harrisonburg.
Thursday, July 12, 2012
June 12th [sic].
Brother writes that rumors of the capture of Baton Rouge by our troops have made him very uneasy about us; and he wishes us to go down to New Orleans if possible. I wish we could. The impression here, is that an attack is inevitable, and the city papers found it necessary to contradict the rumor of Ruggles having occupied it already. I wish mother would go. I can see no difference there or here, except that there, we will be safe, for a while at least. . . .
I grow desperate when I read these Northern papers reviling and abusing us, reproaching us for being broken and dispersed, taunting us with their victories, sparing no humiliating name in speaking of us, and laughing as to what “we’ll see” when we vile rebels are “driven out of Virginia, and the glorious Union firmly established.” I can’t bear these taunts! I grow sick to read these vile, insulting papers that seem written expressly to goad us into madness! . . . There must be many humane, reasonable men in the North; can they not teach their editors decency in this their hour of triumph?
12th.—This night closes the period of one year’s service in the United States. One year ago to-morrow, our regiment changed its situation from State to United States, and when I review that period, and recall the sufferings I have witnessed, the treason and incompetency which have thwarted the well laid plans of the government, the repeated failures of our leaders to embrace most favorable opportunities to crush the rebel armies and to arrest the war, I despair of accomplishing decisive results till we have a change of leaders. But I have a gratifying consciousness of having, up to the ability which God has given me, performed every duty to my country with as little selfishness as man’s frailty will permit. I cannot recall an instance where fatigue, the fear of danger, or even sickness, has been permitted to interpose between my comfort and my efforts to relieve the sufferings of the soldier in whatever form presented. I have had much reason to regret that my efforts were not more effective, but never that I have neglected their performance; nor has it been a source of less thankfulness to me that I have been so small a portion of time unable to labor.
Saturday, 12th—We had company inspection again as usual. A good many negroes are coming into camp. Some of the men who are strong enough to work and who want to be free are given work on the fortifications. A number of the officers are adopting negro boys as servants, and some of the most intelligent boys are being sent North to be educated.
July 12, 1862. Saturday. — Received orders today to move to Green Meadows tomorrow. It is said to be a fine camping place, and although our present camp is the prettiest I have ever seen, we are glad for the sake of change to leave it.
12th. Saturday. Wrote a letter to Uncle and Aunt Branch. My horse got away suddenly and I did not find him until morning.
Headquarters,
U. S. Forces En Route To F. Monroe,
July 12th, 1862.
My dear Mother:
When I wrote you a few hurried, peevish lines, by the last steamer, I then had little thought we were so soon to be summoned to a different sphere of action, and that, had my longing to see you at home been really gratified, I would have returned only to be mortified by being absent from duty at a time when every man should be standing steadily at his post. So you see my lucky star is always dominant. Just when I thought my fate intolerable, I was merely being providentially detained that nothing might prevent me from the fulfilment of my duty. Ten Regiments from the Department of the South, six under Stevens and four under Wright, are ordered to Fortress Monroe, we know not yet whether to reinforce Pope or McClellan. Few of us regret to leave this unholy soil and wretchedly mismanaged department, where we have been sure only of mismanagement and disgrace. I am sorry Rockwell could not go with us. He would have liked to have done so, but a demand was made for infantry alone.
It is a good thing for me that I have escaped from the Southern climate, having been long enough exposed to feel as though every fibre of my body was involved in a malarious atmosphere. A change of climate and a persistent employment of quinine, the Doctor says, are all I need, though were times less stirring, he would probably prescribe in addition a few days at home. I shall probably lose the letters you will write relative to Lilly’s wedding, but you must not forget to let me know all about it in whatever new sphere I may be placed. I suppose you had better address the first letter to the care of General Stevens near Fortress Monroe, and so soon as may be, I will let you know a more definite address.
I enclose the $25.00 for Lilly’s bridal gift. I could not enclose it in my last, as it was then some time since I had seen the paymaster. I hope I may have an opportunity to see you all this summer, but it looks dubious. Next to Lilly’s wedding, I was very anxious to be present at my class meeting, which takes place the end of this month. Hall will be there and many old friends. It will seem strange enough to get among civilized people once more, and there will be so many changes too. Walter, an aged paterfamilias. Lilly and Hall, both old domestic bodies. Hunt in a new house. Horace alone will be left unchanged.
Are any of my friends desirous of making a profitable speculation? A sure and magnificent fortune may be realized from the sale of ginger-pop at Hilton Head. Blind Dennis is doing a flourishing business in the lemonade line, and will certainly before long be putting up a superb house on Washington Street, in Burdick’s best style. The ginger-pop trade, I predict, will be one of the most remunerative branches of business ever opened at Port Royal. It even bids fair to prove as handsome a thing as negro-philanthropy, which in shrewd hands has proved a most capital paying business, and then the sale of ginger-pop is eminently more respectable. At any rate it is a pet idea of mine, and I would like to see the experiment tried.
Well, good-bye. I hope to hear good news on arriving at Fortress Monroe. Love to all.
14th. Still on shipboard but near Fortress Monroe.
Lilly’s wedding day. Miles of friends — little children’s voices — church bells — sweet thoughts. I shall feast to-day for all that though, on hard tack and salt horse with a quinine pill by way of dessert. So goes the world.
Good-bye, my dear Mother. Blessings on you all.
Lovingly,
Will.
“Wilson Small,” July 12.
Dear Mother,—I wrote this morning by Dr. Ware, who left us on the mail-boat, that I should start for home to-morrow morning. Meantime our plans are changed. A flag-of-truce came down to-day to the “Maritanza,” requesting us to go up and get our wounded who were left along the line of march, — four thousand of them, it is said. So the whole hospital fleet is to run five miles up the river, under convoy of the gunboats, to Haxall’s or Carter’s Landing. We are all ready, and waiting the order to start.[1]
Captain Sawtelle paid us a visit to-day, — the first for a week. He is promoted to Colonel Ingalls’s position; Colonel Ingalls to that of General Van Vliet; while the General is on his way to Washington for unknown honors, — all this in just acknowledgment, I suppose, of their admirable management at White House. Captain Sawtelle thinks our losses have been greatly over-estimated, as a very large number of stragglers have come in this week. He places the number of killed, wounded, and missing at twelve thousand. The artillery corps of one hundred and fifty-six guns lost one hundred and forty-three men, — not a man to each gun. He told us that almost the last thing he did at White House was to order the engines upon the railroad to be run, with all the cars, to the end of the track and precipitated into the river. Just as the order was being executed, the train almost in motion, he recollected that a gunboat had gone up beyond the bridge, and that the train would block the river. He then ordered the cars and the engines to be piled up and fired, which, together with the White House, made the great blaze which we saw; the White House was fired by a drunken soldier.
I never felt the slightest desire to witness a battle until I listened to the accounts they all give of the battle of Malvern Hill, where our whole artillery was massed on the hill-side and hurled back a column of thirty thousand men as it debouched with three heads. I listened to the guns; and even where we were it was a mighty thunder.
I have had one pleasant day, or part of a day. I was sitting alone, the rest were out rowing on the river, when I heard the regular beat of man-of-war’s oars, and presently a trig captain’s gig came alongside, and Captain George Rodgers, of the “Tioga,” ran upstairs.[2] I was delighted; it is really so much to see an old friend here. He urged me to go on board the “Tioga,” and promised to take me first to the “Monitor,” and then down the river to shell out a battery which was troublesome. I forgot I was tired and ill; I felt a momentary pang at my dirty dress: but I put on a clean white apron, and went off with alacrity. Things did not turn out quite favorably. When we reached the ” Monitor” the men were bathing, and we had to give up our visit. And we had scarcely reached the lovely “Tioga,” when a clumsy brig got foul of her, tearing away part of her paddle-box; and we did not get free till half-past ten at night, when there was nothing for me to do but go back at once to the ” Small.”
The “Tioga” is a picture, — just out of dock, lovely in model, and brilliant in paint and brass. She carries eight guns, — one a ten-inch Dahlgren, the other a ten-inch rifled Parrott. Captain Rodgers gave me a piece of the only Confederate balloon (captured on the “Teaser “), made of ladies’ silk dresses of every pattern and color. The piece I have is partly a brown stripe, and partly a green chini.
The other day as we came up the river, returning from Washington, we were ordered by the gunboat on guard to go single file past some wooded bluffs. The “Juniata” was ahead of us, when a shot; went through her pilot-house and hit the bell-wire, making the signal to stop. The engineer obeyed it and stopped the boat, when a second shot fell between us, — otherwise the “Small” might have caught it. Captain Rodgers told me he was convoying us, and had just left us, as he thought, beyond all danger from Fort Powhatan, when the shots were fired. He ran up immediately; but before he could get a gun sighted, the fellows had limbered up, and were off. It was a light four-gun battery. These batteries give a great deal of trouble, but, so far, have done very little damage. The men make breast-works of felled trees behind other trees which conceal them. Our gunboats keep up a constant straggling fire into the woods to prevent the enemy from settling in one spot. It was to dislodge one of these batteries, which seemed to have taken up a position near Fort Powhatan, that the “Tioga” was ordered down the river, when, unfortunately, she collided with the brig.
[1] The enemy sent down only four hundred men, keeping the rest as prisoners. The former were shipped on board the “Spaulding” and another vessel.
[2] Captain Rodgers was killed in the turret of the monitor “Catskill” which he commanded before Charleston, S.C., in 1863. He was passing a U. S. A. General Hospital where I was stationed, the day after he received his appointment to her. He landed, and ran up to my quarters to tell me of it. I congratulated him. “Yes,” he said, ” I am appointed to my coffin,” —alluding to the build of the vessel.
Charles William Woolsey to his brother-in-law, Joseph Howland,
Wilson Small, Harrison’s Landing,
Saturday, July 12th.
Dear Joe: I saw, to-day, your adjutant, surgeon, and quartermaster; the former is much better, he says, and is going home in a day or two. He reports the 16th in good condition and in excellent spirits. This is unmistakably the case with the whole army. Exhausted and disappointed they naturally are (or were), but they have never lost heart, and the morale of our army is as good as ever. Having but little to do on the boat I have been on shore about the camps for a day or two, and have got a good idea of the strength of our position. It seems to me impregnable even without the earthworks we have thrown up at the weakest points. With these, we are very strong and can surely hold our own. Taking Richmond, however, is quite a different thing.
Send us the “Fishkill Standard” containing the account of the “ovation,” and do not stand too long poised on one leg when you harangue the assembled multitude from the Tioronda balcony.
Georgy is going home soon, and perhaps myself. Love to E.
Yours affectionately,
C. W. W.
Georgeanna Woolsey’s journal.
July 12.
Lying off Harrison’s Point in sight of the hospital on shore to which we went the other evening. The fifty tents we brought from Washington are going up and are partly filled— men on cots, and not very ill. The place is to be used as a rest for a few days for men who can then join their regiments. The Medical Department is greatly improved, and the Sanitary Commission, who were chiefly instrumental in putting in the new Surgeon-General (Hammond), who in his turn has put in all the good new men, finds its work here at an end, and might as well retire gracefully. Four thousand sick have been sent north from Harrison’s. Soup, and food generally, are being cooked all the time, without the aid of the Sanitary Commission, and they would leave now but for the flag of truce sent in by Lee to arrange for the bringing away of our wounded left behind in the retreat. The transports are under orders.
Commodore Wilkes is here in charge of the gun-boat fleet, and Captain Rodgers sent his small boat for us the other day, and took us all over his vessel and then over the Monitor and the Maratanza. The Galena was full of cannon ball holes. The Maratanza gave me a piece of the balloon found on the rebel gun-boat Teaser. It was made of the old silk dresses of the ladies of Richmond, forty or more different patterns. They gave me, too, the signal flag of the little imp. We went over her to see the damage the shell did her, bursting into the boiler and disemboweling her.
The army is quiet and resting, and the surgeons of the regiments have been coming in constantly to the Sanitary Commission supply boat with requisitions for the hospitals. We are giving out barrels of vegetables. The Small will run up the river and be ready to fill a gap in bringing off our wounded prisoners, and it will be a comfort to do something before going home ignominiously. The last two weeks of waiting has been wearing to us all, and Miss Wormeley is a fascinating wreck.
