July 29 — This morning I left the peaceful haunts of home and am off again for the desolating scenes of war. I took stage at New Market at nine o’clock, and arrived in Harrisonburg at one. I fooled around town a few hours, and five o’clock found me in camp ready to answer evening roll-call.
Sunday, July 29, 2012
July 29.—No army news. In this quiet nook mail-day is looked forward to with the greatest anxiety, and the newspapers are read with avidity from beginning to end— embracing Southern rumours, official statements, army telegrams, Yankee extravaganzas, and the various et caeteras. The sick and wounded in the various hospitals are subjects for thought and action in every part of our State which is free to act for them; we all do what we can in our own little way; and surely if we have nothing but prayer to offer, great good must be effected. Yesterday evening, while walking out, a young woman with a baby in her arms passed us rapidly, weeping piteously, and with the wildest expressions of grief; we turned to follow her, but found that another woman was meeting her, whom we recognized as her mother; in another moment all was explained by her father, whom we met, slowly wending his way homeward. He had been to the hospital at Danville to see his son-in-law, whose name appeared among the wounded there. On reaching the place, he found that he had just been buried. On returning he met his daughter walking; in her impatience and anxiety about her husband, she could not sit still in the house; and in her ignorance, she supposed that her father would bring him home, to be nursed. Poor thing! she is one of thousands. Oh that the enemy may be driven from our land, with a wholesome dread of encroaching upon our borders again! Our people are suffering too much; they cannot stand it. The family here suffers much anxiety as each battle approaches, about their young son, the pride and darling of the household. He is a lieutenant in the Regiment; but during the fights around Richmond, as his captain was unfit for duty, the first lieutenant killed in the first fight, the command of the company devolved on this dear, fair-haired boy, and many praises have they heard of his bravery during those terrible days. He writes most delightfully encouraging letters, and never seems to know that he is enduring hardships. His last letter, written on a stump near Charles City Court-House, whither they had followed the enemy, was most exultant; and, brave young Christian as he is, he gives the glory to God. He exults in having helped to drive them, and, as it were, pen them up on the river; and though they are now desecrating the fair homes of his ancestors, (Berkeley and Westover,) yet, as they dare not unfurl their once proud banner on any other spot in Lower Virginia, and only there because protected by their gun-boats, he seems to think that the proud spirits of the Byrds and Harrisons may submit when they reflect that though their ancestral trees may shelter the direst of all foes, yet their ancestral marshes are yielding their malaria and mosquitoes with an unstinting hand, and aiding unsparingly the sword of the South in relieving it of invaders. Dear B., like so many Southern boys, he was summoned by the tocsin of war from the class-room to the camp. His career was most successful in one of the first literary institutions in this country, and if he lives he will return to his studies less of a scholar, but more of a man, in the highest sense of the word, than any collegiate course could have made him. But we can’t look forward, for what horrors may come upon us before our independence is achieved it makes my heart ache to dwell upon.
JULY 29TH.—Pope’s army, greatly reinforced, are committing shocking devastations in Culpepper and Orange Counties. His brutal orders, and his bragging proclamations, have wrought our men to such a pitch of exasperation that, when the day of battle comes, there will be, most be terrible slaughter.
A pair of African American men—one holding a horse, the other a broom—pose in front of a group of Union soldiers. Free blacks served the Union forces in various capacities, from laborer to soldier.
Creator: Mathew Brady
Created: ca. 1862 (copyrighted 1862)
Medium: Albumen carte-de-visite photograph.
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Gladstone Collection of African American Photographs
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division
July 29th.
This town, with its ten thousand soldiers, is more quiet than it was with the old population of seven thousand citizens. With this tremendous addition, it is like a graveyard in its quiet, at times. These poor soldiers are dying awfully. Thirteen went yesterday. On Sunday the boats discharged hundreds of sick at our landing. Some lay there all the afternoon in the hot sun, waiting for the wagon to carry them to the hospital, which task occupied the whole evening. In the mean time these poor wretches lay uncovered on the ground, in every stage of sickness. Cousin Will saw one lying dead without a creature by to notice when he died. Another was dying, and muttering to himself as he lay too far gone to brush the flies out of his eyes and mouth, while no one was able to do it for him. Cousin Will helped him, though. Another, a mere skeleton, lay in the agonies of death, too; but he evidently had kind friends, for several were gathered around holding him up, and fanning him, while his son leaned over him crying aloud. Tiche says it was dreadful to hear the poor boy’s sobs. All day our vis-à-vis, Baumstark, with his several aids, plies his hammer; all day Sunday he made coffins, and says he can’t make them, fast enough. Think, too, he is by no means the only undertaker here! Oh, I wish these poor men were safe in their own land! It is heartbreaking to see them die here like dogs, with no one to say Godspeed. The Catholic priest went to see some, sometime ago, and going near one who lay in bed, said some kind thing, when the man burst into tears and cried, “Thank God, I have heard one kind word before I die!” In a few minutes the poor wretch was dead.
29th.—It is a source of unspeakable gratification to me that after my long fights, the comforts of the suffering soldiers are being heeded; whether on account of my much importunity, or from the fact that the necessity of this course has become apparent to the Military Department, or that the new Surgeon General has directed his attention more particularly to it, it matters not. When I call for aid for the hospitals under my care I get it. All the surgeons in this department now have only to call for help to procure enough to clean, drain, and sweep camp grounds every day, to ask for the necessary food, medicine and furniture, and if they will then give their personal attention to it, they can have it. The scurvy has been rapidly increasing with us, but we have now the means of arresting it. Thanks to U. S. Sanitary Commission for the larger share of them.
Some mysterious movements are going on in this army. At night we look over a large flat covered with tents, lighted by camp fires, resonant with the sounds of living soldiers. In the morning that same flat is deserted and still, as if the angel of death had enjoyed a passover. What has become of the busy actors of the night, none who dare speak of it can conjecture. In fact, in the present perilous condition of the army all purposes are necessarily secret. Some think the troops thus disappearing are crossing the river and marching on Fort Darling. Some think they are moving down the river to possess ourselves of a fort which is being built to blockade the river and cut off our supplies. Others think Washington is again in danger, and that a part of this army is being shipped thither, whilst many others are of opinion that we are slowly and secretly withdrawing our forces, and that Gen. Smith’s division is to be left here as a blind and sacraficed to save the balance of the army. This would seem hard; yet when it becomes necessary, Gen. Smith will be found to be the very man, and his the very army to submit to the necessity without a murmur.
I am, however, of the opinion that the bulk of the rebel army has withdrawn from about us, and is after General Pope, and that we are taking advantage of their absence to escape from our present perilous position. General Pope’s antecedents warrant the belief that whatever is in his power to do for our relief will be accomplished to the utmost of his ability.
Tuesday, 29th—We got on the right road and started at 8 o’clock this morning. We marched twelve miles and bivouacked for the night. The weather is extremely hot and the roads are very dusty. Orlando Stout of Company E fell out of the ranks today, and getting too far behind, was taken prisoner.
Camp Green Meadows, July 29, 1862. Tuesday. — Returned from [to] Camp Green Meadows today. General Cox thinks Colonel Scammon will be ordered to act as brigadier by the President; that a vacancy in the colonelcy of the Twenty-third will thus occur; that I had better hold on for the present before accepting the Eighty-third [Seventy-ninth]. As I have no notice that the Governor has made the appointment, I shall have nothing to act on for some days, if at all. But drafting is the thing!
29th. Wrote to Uncle Albert Harris.
Tuesday, 29th.—Left home 11 A. M. Got to Chattanooga, 4 P. M.
(Note: picture is of an unidentified Confederate soldier.)
