Sharpsburg, Md. View with Episcopal church in distance; photograph by Alexander Gardner.
Library of Congress image.
Thursday, September 27, 2012
September 27th. The camp looks lonesome in the absence of so many familiar faces. If we could only get substitutes to take the places of those constantly dropping out through the casualties of war that would be some compensation, but as it is there is only a void, and the result is a general apathy, and loss of interest. War is not as romantic as it once seemed to me, the cruelty and suffering is incredible and worries one all the time, and the losses and destruction of human life, at all events in this war, are so enormous that it seems only a question of time, when all of us must be hors du combat.
September 27.—The Thirty-first regiment of New-Jersey volunteers, under the command of Colonel A. P. Berthoud, left Flemington to-day for Washington, nine hundred and seventy-seven strong, armed with Enfield rifles.
— Two infantry and one cavalry regiment, under command of Colonel Toland, of the Thirty-fourth Ohio regiment, made an ineffectual attempt to capture Jenkins’s rebel cavalry, in camp at Buffalo, on the Kanawha River, Va. His troops advanced in three directions from Point Pleasant. The centre column surprised Jenkins’s cavalry, five hundred strong, before the other columns arrived, drove the rebels out of their camp, and captured and destroyed all their camp equipage, killing seven, and capturing nine. They pursued them about one and a half miles, when they were reenforced by two regiments of infantry and three pieces of artillery. The National force then fell back without the loss of a man.
— Major John J. Key was dismissed from the service of the United States for having replied to the question propounded to him—”Why was not the rebel army bagged immediately after the battle near Sharpsburgh?” — that it was “not the game; that we should tire the rebels out and ourselves; that that was the only way the Union could be preserved, we come together fraternally, and slavery be saved.”
— Augusta, Ky., was captured by a force of rebel guerrillas, under Captain Basil Duke. The home guard, under the command of Colonel Bradford, vigorously attacked the rebels from the houses; but, being outnumbered, they were compelled to surrender, but not before killing and wounding a large number of their enemies.— (Doc. 212.)
