JULY 26TH—There is a pause in the depreciation of C. S. securities.
Thursday, July 26, 2012
Saturday, 26th—Nothing of importance. Much of our time in camp is taken up with the question of rations. During this hot weather the regular army rations are drawn, but the men use very little of the salt bacon. But the bacon being issued, the company cook takes care of it and now has a wagon load of it stacked up beside his tent, anyone being permitted to go and help himself to it. At noon the company cook prepares the bean soup and cooks the pickled beef, after which he calls out for every man to come and get his portion. All the other rations are issued every five days, each man carrying his portion in his haversack. We haven had no Irish potatoes issued for eight months now, but fresh beef we draw, sometimes twice a week, and it is cooked for us by the company cook. The rations are all of good quality with the exception of crackers, which at times are a little worm-eaten.
26th. Wrote a letter to Fannie. Played chess with Sergeant Spencer.
Harrison’s Landing, James River, Va.,
Saturday, July 26, 1862.
Dear Brother and Sister:—
General Porter’s corps, which is quite an army of itself, is now encamped on the large wheat field of the Westover estate. The Pennsylvania Reserve of thirteen regiments, three batteries and a regiment of cavalry lies next to us on the north. Morell’s division of fifteen regiments, three batteries and two regiments of cavalry lies next to them, and between us and the river is the camp of the regulars under Sykes. All these troops belong to General Porter’s corps. You may guess that with their tents and all the baggage wagons and horses, cannon and ammunition wagons, this field is pretty well filled up. Through all the camps there is constant activity. The men are cleaning up their arms or cooking round the fire, sitting on the ground eating their hard tack and sipping their black coffee. Little squads are marching about drilling or going through their inspection, which takes place twice a day. Every thing is kept in tip top order, ready for a fight at a moment’s notice. And then, if you could see the road—it looks like the road near a county fair ground, full of teams from morning till night, long trains of wagons that are a curiosity in themselves, great covered wagons as large as two of our lumber wagons, with six mules, and a driver riding the near pole mule and guiding his team with one line. These things would all amuse you, but I have seen so many of them that they have lost their interest.
I suppose this is the height of the haying season at home. Mowing machines are rattling over the meadows, and the barns are filling up, but I see nothing like that here. Grain fields are turned into camping grounds and the cavalry horses harvest the wheat. War makes sad work with the country it passes over.
You ask me how I felt when the battle commenced, if I feared I should fall, etc. That is a very hard question to answer. In the fight at Gaines’ Mill I had lain in the woods almost all day waiting for them before I saw a rebel. They had been shelling us all the time, and occasionally a shell would burst within a few feet of me and startle me a little, but we had so strong a position and felt so certain of driving the rebels off that I was anxious to have them come on. The last words I heard Colonel McLane say were, “You’ll see enough of them before night, boys.” His words proved too true. We had but little to do with repulsing them, for they did not come within range of our guns either time, but we could hear the firing, and, when the cheers of our men announced their victory, a feeling of exultation ran through our minds. “Come on,” we thought, “we’ll show you how freemen fight,” but when they attacked us so unexpectedly in the rear, my feelings changed. Surprise at first and a wonder how they could get there, and then, when the truth flashed through my mind that they had broken through our lines, a feeling of shame and indignation against the men who would retreat before the enemy. Then, when the colonel was killed and Henry and Denny wounded, I felt some excited. I was stronger than I had been before in a month and a kind of desperation seized me. Scenes that would have unnerved me at other times had no effect. I snatched a gun from the hands of a man who was shot through the head, as he staggered and fell. At other times I would have been horror-struck and could not have moved, but then I jumped over dead men with as little feeling as I would over a log. The feeling that was uppermost in my mind was a desire to kill as many rebels as I could. The loss of comrades maddened me, the balls flew past me hissing in the air, they knocked my guns to splinters, but the closer they came they seemed to make me more insensible to fear. I had no time to think of anything but my duty to do all I could to drive back the enemy, and it was not duty that kept me there either, but a feeling that I had a chance then to help put down secession and a determination to do my best. My heart was in the fight, and I couldn’t be anywhere else. I told you it was hard to describe one’s feeling in a battle, and it is. No one can ever know exactly till he has been through it. In the fight at Malvern Hill my feelings were a little different. The memory of the scenes of the past few days was fresh in my mind, and as I marched up the hill that concealed us from the enemy, I must admit I felt a reluctance, rather a fear of going in. We were so worn out by excitement, fatigue, and want of sleep, that there was not the spirit in the movement of the men that usually characterized them, but there was the bitter determination to do or die. We would not falter, let the consequences be what they might. Butterfield and Griffin dashed here and there, cheering on the men—”Go in, my gallant Eighty-third, and give ’em h—l,” yelled Butterfield as he dashed along the line, and his inspiring manner cheered the men up. We rushed over the hill on the double quick and there were the rebels. Column behind column was swarming out of the woods and advancing on us. Ten times our number were opposed to us. There were so many that they had not room to deploy, but came up in close column. Their intention evidently was to send such an overwhelming force against us, that, if we killed twice our number, there would be enough left to drive us from the field and capture our batteries. They were perfectly reckless of life and bent on driving us off, cost what it might. We went part way down the hill to meet them, so that our artillery could fire over us, then we waited for them. The hill behind us was covered with cannon in two rows and as they advanced our artillerists poured in such deadly charges of grape that it was more than any troops could stand. Each discharge would mow a swath through their lines, from five to eight feet wide. Still they closed up their ranks and came on till they met our fire, and then they wavered. We poured it into them as fast as we could load and fire, and I tell you my fear was gone then. I felt exultant. We cheered and cheered and shouted our watchword—”Remember McLane,” and the rebels, disheartened, fell back. Butterfield’s expression of “give ’em hell” was not inapt. It was more like the work of fiends than that of human beings. The roar of the artillery, the rattling of musketry and the unearthly screaming of the great two-foot shells from the gunboats made such music as is only fit for demons, and the appearance of the men was scarcely human. The sweat rolled in streams, for there is nothing like fighting to heat a man’s blood, and as the men wiped their faces with powder-grimed or bloody hands, they left the most horrible looking countenances you ever saw. But no one cared for looks or sound. That roar of artillery was the sweetest music I ever heard, for it carried death and terror to the enemies of our country and our flag. I said the rebels retreated—they fell back out of range of our infantry, formed again and again came up. Fiercer grew the conflict and our excitement rose with it. Our men fell thick and fast, and wounded men were all the time crawling to the rear, but we did not heed them. We sat there and fought till our ammunition was gone and we had to fill up from the boxes of our dead and wounded comrades, and still we had no thought of leaving, but another brigade relieved us and we retired. Then came the reaction. I must say that the time when one feels the horrors of war most keenly is after the battle, not before it or in it.
July 26th. Weather glorious; good food and regular sleep has made a wonderful change in our physique, most of us getting stout. I was as thin as a rail, but am beginning to fill out a little. At 11 A. M. every tent in the whole division was struck, the ground thoroughly swept with home-made brooms, and left exposed to the sun till 5 P. M. ; this was to restore the hygienic conditions of the camp which were believed to be foul. Just after the tents were put up again a heavy storm gathered and broke about six o’clock, lasting until 9 P. M. It rained tremendously, but our tents were well put up, and stood like trees.
Oak Ridge, July 26, 1862, Saturday.—It was not till Wednesday that H. could get into Vicksburg, ten miles distant, for a passport, without which we could not go on the cars. We started Thursday morning. I had to ride seven miles on a hard-trotting horse to the nearest station. The day was burning at white heat. When the station was reached my hair was down, my hat on my neck, and my feelings were indescribable.
On the train one seemed to be right in the stream of war, among officers, soldiers, sick men and cripples, adieus, tears, laughter, constant chatter, and, strangest of all, sentinels posted at the locked car-doors demanding passports. There was no train south from Jackson that day, so we put up at the Bowman House. The excitement was indescribable. All the world appeared to be traveling through Jackson. People were besieging the two hotels, offering enormous prices for the privilege of sleeping anywhere under a roof. There were many refugees from New Orleans, among them some acquaintances of mine. The peculiar style of [women’s] dress necessitated by the exigencies of war gave the crowd a very striking appearance. In single suits I saw sleeves of one color, the waist of another, the skirt of another; scarlet jackets and gray skirts; black waists and blue skirts; black skirts and gray waists; the trimming chiefly gold braid and buttons, to give a military air. The gray and gold uniforms of the officers, glittering between, made up a carnival of color. Every moment we saw strange meetings and partings of people from all over the South. Conditions of time, space, locality, and estate were all loosened; everybody seemed floating he knew not whither, but determined to be jolly, and keep up an excitement. At supper we had tough steak, heavy, dirty-looking bread, Confederate coffee. The coffee was made of either parched rye or cornmeal, or of sweet potatoes cut in small cubes and roasted. This was the favorite. When flavored with “coffee essence,” sweetened with sorghum, and tinctured with chalky milk, it made a curious beverage, which, after tasting, I preferred not to drink. Every one else was drinking it, and an acquaintance said, “Oh, you’ll get bravely over that. I used to be a Jewess about pork, but now we just kill a hog and eat it, and kill another and do the same. It’s all we have.”
Friday morning we took the down train for the station near my friend’s house. At every station we had to go through the examination of passes, as if in a foreign country.
The conscript camp was at Brookhaven, and every man had been ordered to report there or to be treated as a deserter. At every station I shivered mentally, expecting H. to be dragged off. Brookhaven was also the station for dinner. I choked mine down, feeling the sword hanging over me by a single hair. At sunset we reached our station. The landlady was pouring tea when we took our seats and I expected a treat, but when I tasted it it was sassafras tea, the very odor of which sickens me. There was a general surprise when I asked to exchange it for a glass of water; every one was drinking it as if it were nectar. This morning we drove out here.
My friend’s little nest is calm in contrast to the tumult not far off.
Yet the trials of war are here too. Having no matches, they keep fire, carefully covering it at night, for Mr. G. has no powder, and cannot flash the gun into combustibles as some do. One day they had to go with the children to the village, and the servant let the fire go out. When they returned at nightfall, wet and hungry, there was neither fire nor food. Mr. G. had to saddle the tired mule and ride three miles for a pan of coals, and blow them, all the way back, to keep them alight. Crockery has gradually been broken and tin-cups rusted out, and a visitor told me they had made tumblers out of clear glass bottles by cutting them smooth with a heated wire, and that they had nothing else to drink from.
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Note: To protect Mrs. Miller’s job as a teacher in New Orleans, the diary was published anonymously, edited by G. W. Cable, names were changed and initials were often used instead of full names — and even the initials differed from the real person’s initials.
July 26.—Madison Court-House, Va., was occupied by the First cavalry of Connecticut, a portion of General Sigel’s advance, after a slight skirmish with the rebel cavalry under Robertson, who were driven out of the town. — Prominent citizens of Hayward County, Tenn., were captured by the rebel guerrillas for selling cotton.—The Union transport schooner Louisa Reeves, of New York, laden with forage for the army of the Potomac, was this day captured and burned by a party of rebel troops, at Coggins’s Point, James River, Va.
—A skirmish took place near Patten, Missouri, between a company of the Tenth battalion of State militia, under Major Chevreaux, and two hundred guerrillas, in which the latter were defeated and put to flight, with a loss of twenty-five killed and wounded. The National loss was three wounded.—St. Louis News, July 29.
—Yesterday the towns of Van Buren, Lysander and Marcellus, N. Y, subscribed four thousand five hundred dollars to aid in raising a regiment under the call of President Lincoln for more troops, issued on the first instant, and to-day the Salt Company of Onondaga, N. Y., subscribed ten thousand dollars for the same purpose.
— A slight skirmish occurred near Young’s Cross-Roads, at the head of White Oak River, N. C, between a reconnoitring party of Union troops, under Colonel Heckman, of the Ninth New-Jersey regiment, and a body of rebel cavalry, numbering about two hundred men, which resulted in the complete defeat of the rebels.
— Yesterday a skirmish took place near the Mountain Store, about twenty miles from Houston, Missouri, between a body of Union troops under the command of Captain Bradway, Third Missouri cavalry, and a force of rebel guerrillas under Colonel Coleman, resulting in the retreat of the latter towards the Big Piney River, where they were encountered to-day by the same party of Unionists, and after a sharp fight, were completely routed. In these two skirmishes the rebels had five men killed and twelve wounded. The Union party were uninjured.—(Doc. 161.)
— Large and enthusiastic meetings were held in Philadelphia, Pa., and Wheeling, Va., for the purpose of promoting enlistments into the army under the call of President Lincoln for more troops. In the meeting at Philadelphia, resolutions were unanimously adopted recommending the employment of all the power and means the Executive could command to put down the rebellion; thanking President Lincoln for the change in policy in the treatment of the property of rebels; pledging the Government their earnest support in resisting any foreign interference, and recommending every able-bodied citizen to unite himself to some military organization, to be ready for any emergency. A large amount of money was subscribed to the bounty fund. In the meeting at Wheeling a memorial was adopted, praying the County Court to make a levy of twenty thousand dollars to aid volunteering.
