10th.—Bad news! The papers bring an account of the defeat of our army at Corinth. It was commanded by General Van Dorn—the Federals by Rosecranz. They fought Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. The fight said to have been very bloody—great loss on both sides. The first two days we had the advantage, but on Sunday the Yankees “brought up reinforcements,” and our men had to retire to Ripley. The Northern papers do not brag quite so much as usual; they say their loss was very great, particularly in officers; from which, I hope it was not quite so bad with us as our first accounts represent. This bringing up of reinforcements, which the Yankees do in such numbers, is ruinous to us. Ah! if we could only fight them on an equal footing, we could expunge them from the face of the earth: but we have to put forth every energy to get rid of them, while they come like the frogs, the flies, the locusts, and the rest of the vermin which infested the land of Egypt, to destroy our peace.
Wednesday, October 10, 2012
October 10, Friday. Some vague and indefinite tidings of a victory by Buell in Kentucky in a two days’ fight at Perryville. We hear also of the capture of batteries by the Navy on the St. John’s in Florida, but have no particulars.
A telegram from Delano[1] at New Bedford tells me that the pirate or Rebel steamer 290, built in Great Britain and manned by British seamen, fresh from England, has captured and burnt five whaling vessels off the Western Islands. The State Department will, I suppose, submit to this evidence that England is an underhand auxiliary to the Rebels, be passive on the subject, and the Navy Department will receive as usual torrents of abuse.
At Cabinet to-day, among other subjects, that of trade at Norfolk was under consideration. We were told the people are in great distress and trouble, cannot get subsistence nor make sale of anything by reason of the blockade. Chase thought it very hard, was disposed to open the port or relax the blockade. Stanton opposed both; said Norfolk was hot with rebellion, and aid to Norfolk would relieve Richmond. The President, in the kindness of his heart, was at first inclined to grant relief. Chase said I had instructed the squadron to rigidly enforce the blockade. I admitted this to be true as regarded Norfolk and all the blockaded ports, and assured him I should not relax unless by an Executive order, or do otherwise until we had another policy. That to strictly maintain the blockade caused suffering I had no doubt; that was the chief object of the blockade. I was doing all in my power to make rebellion unpopular, and as a means, I would cause the whole insurrectionary region to suffer until they laid down their arms and became loyal. The case was not one of sympathy but of duty. Chase urged that they might be permitted to bring out and exchange some of their products, such as shingles, staves, tar, etc., which they could trade for necessaries that were indispensable. “Then,” said I, “raise the blockade. Act in good faith with all; let us have no favoritism. That is my policy. You must not use the blockade for domestic traffic or to enrich a few.”
The President said these were matters which he had not sufficiently considered. My remarks had opened a view that he had not taken. He proposed that Seward and Chase should see what could be done.
There is, I can see, a scheme for permits, special favors, Treasury agents, and improper management in all this; not that Chase is to receive any pecuniary benefit himself, but in his political aspirations he is courting, and will give authority to, General Dix, who has, he thinks, political influence. It is much less, I apprehend, than Chase supposes. Dix is, I presume, as clear of pecuniary gain as Chase, but he has on his staff and around him a set of bloodsuckers who propose to make use of the blockade as a machine to enrich themselves. A few favorites design to monopolize the trade of Norfolk, and the Government is to be at the expense of giving them this monopoly by absolute nonintercourse, enforced by naval vessels to all but themselves. As we have absolute possession of Norfolk and its vicinity, there is no substantial reason for continuing the blockade, and it can benefit none but Army and Treasury favorites. General Dix has, I regret to see, lax notions. Admiral Lee holds him in check; he appeals to Chase, who is very severe towards the Rebels, except in certain matters of trade and Treasury patronage carrying with them political influence.
Seward wishes me to modify my second letter on the subject of instructions under the British slavery treaty, so as to relieve him in a measure. I have no objection; he does not appear to advantage in the proceedings. In a scheme to obtain popularity for himself, he has been secretive, hasty, inconsiderate, overcunning, and weak. The Englishmen have detected his weak side and taken advantage of it. His vanity and egotism have been flattered, and he has undertaken an ostentatious exhibition of his power to the legations, and at the same time would secure favor with, the Abolitionists and Anti-Slavery men by a most singular contrivance, which, if carried into effect, would destroy our naval efficiency. His treaty binds us to surrender for a specific purpose the general belligerent right of search in the most important latitudes. The effect would be in the highest degree advantageous to the Rebels, and wholly in their interest. It seems to me a contrivance to entrap our Government, into which the Secretary of State, without consulting his associates, has been unwittingly seduced.
D. D. Porter left Wednesday to take command of the Mississippi Squadron, with the appointment of Acting Admiral. This is an experiment, and the results not entirely certain. Many officers of the Navy who are his seniors will be dissatisfied, but his juniors may, by it, be stimulated. The river naval service is unique. Foote performed wonders and dissipated many prejudices. The army has fallen in love with the gunboats and wants them in every creek. Porter is wanting in some of the best qualities of Foote, but excels him perhaps in others. The service requires great energy, great activity, abundant resources. Porter is full of each, but is reckless, improvident, often too presuming and assuming. In an interview on Wednesday, I endeavored to caution him on certain points and to encourage him in others. In conformity with his special request, General McClernand is to command the army with which the Navy cooperates. This gratifies him, for he dreads and protests against association with any West Point general; says they are too self-sufficient, pedantic, and unpractical.
The currency and financial questions will soon be as troublesome as the management of the armies. In making Treasury notes or irredeemable paper of any kind a legal tender, and in flooding the country with inconvertible paper money down to a dollar and fractional parts of a dollar, the Secretary of the Treasury may obtain momentary ease and comfort, but woe and misery will follow to the country. Mr. Chase has a good deal of ability, but has never made finance his study. His general ideas appear to be crudely sound, but he does not act upon them, and his principal and most active and persistent advisers are of a bad school. The best and soundest financiers content themselves with calmly stating sound financial truths. He has not made his plans a subject of Cabinet consultation. Perhaps it is best he should not. I think he has advised with them but little, individually. Incidentally he and I have once or twice had conversations on these matters, and our views appeared to correspond, but when he has come to act, a different policy has been pursued. It will add to the heavy burdens that overload the people.
Singular notions prevail with some of our Cabinet associates, — such as have made me doubt whether the men were serious in stating them. On one occasion, something like a year ago, Smith expressed a hope that the Treasury would hasten, and as speedily as possible get out the fractional parts of a dollar, in order to put a stop to hoarding. Chase assured Smith he was hurrying on the work as fast as possible. I expressed astonishment and regret, and insisted that the more paper he issued, the more hoarding of coin there would be and the less money we should have; that all attempts in all countries and times to cheat gold and silver had proved failures and always would; that money was one thing and currency another; convertible paper was current for money, inconvertible paper was not; that two currencies could not circulate at the same time in any community; that the vicious and poor currency always superseded the better, and must in the nature of things.
Chase, without controverting these remarks, said I belonged to the race of hard-money men, whose ideas were not exactly adapted to these times. Smith was perfectly confident that hoarding up money would cease when there was no object in it, and if the Treasury would furnish us with paper there would be no object to hoard. He was confident it would do the work. I asked Chase if he indorsed such views, but could get no satisfactory answer. The Treasury is pursuing a course which will unsettle all values.
Friday, 10th—We have received no rations yet and have nothing but fresh meat and sweet potatoes to eat. Our brigade went out about four miles on a scout, to escort a battery to another part of the army. The weather is very hot and about 3 o’clock in the afternoon it commenced to rain, the roads soon becoming very muddy, for the dust was so deep. At dark we reached our old bivouac, where we had been the night before last, and stopped for the night. A cool wind followed the rain and some of us went into negro huts, built fires and dried our clothes.
Off For Washington.
Washington, Oct. 10, 1862.
Dear Free Press:
The camp of the Twelfth, at Brattleboro, presented a busy appearance last Tuesday morning. The thousand operations preparatory to breaking up of camp were in active progress. The quarters were full of friends of the soldiers, many of them ladies who were seated here and there and plying busy fingers in taking the last stitches for their brothers and friends, before bidding them a final good bye. The men were generally in good spirits, and anxious to be off. By eleven o’clock every knapsack was packed and the regiment in line, and at half-past eleven—the time set, to a minute—it marched from Camp Lincoln.
The day was a very hot one, and the sun blazed down with midsummer power. The Thirteenth, Col. Randall, escorted the Twelfth to the railroad station. Col. Stoughton, commanding the post, took the head of the column, and in order to show the regiment to some of his Brattleboro friends, took it by a circuitous route through the streets to the station. The march of two miles in the hot sun was a pretty hard one for the boys; but in the little party of stragglers, perhaps twenty in all, who fell out on the way and brought up the rear, there was not a man of the Howard Guard. Through some misunderstanding or neglect on the part of the railroad companies, though the day and hour of our departure had been set for nearly a week, no cars were in readiness, and we had to wait until they were brought from below. The regiment was accordingly marched half a mile down the river to a shaded meadow and allowed to lie off for the remainder of the day. A barrel of good things, sent from Burlington by Mr. Beach, supplied our company with all they could eat and some to spare to the rest, and the afternoon passed comfortably away. At six o’clock, a train of empty cars arrived, and the work of embarkation commenced at seven. The cars were too few in number, however, and some freight cars had to be rigged with seats manufactured on the spot. I believe our officers considered themselves fortunate in not having to wait until cars and all were manufactured for the occasion. It was ten o’clock before we were fairly under way. Before this, our kind friends who had come to Brattleboro to see us off, had taken their leave, and the actual departure was as quiet as that of any train of thirty loaded cars could be.
The delay in getting away was a fortunate thing for the men. Had they been packed into the cars as they came heated from the march, and compelled to ride all the remainder of that hot day, they would have suffered. As it was, they lay around in the shade during the afternoon and took the rail in the cool moonlight. The night was a splendid one, and the ride down the beautiful valley of the Connecticut, which seemed doubly beautiful in the liquid moon-light, was a notable one for every man who had a particle of sentiment in his soul.
At Springfield, Mass., where we arrived about one o’clock, we were received with a salute of fifty guns. On the supposition that we should arrive about supper time, preparations had also been made to supply refreshment to the troops; but the delay upset the kind arrangement. We made little stop there or any where, but swept on down the river. We reached New Haven at 5 o’clock, A. M., spent an hour in changing the men and the baggage from the cars to the “large and splendid” steamer Continental, and were off for New York. The boat barely touched at Peck Slip, and then went on to Jersey City, where we debarked about noon. Col. Howe[1] had provided soup and bread, which was served promptly, and we were off again by rail for Washington.
I can give little time and space to the thousand times told story of the passage of a regiment from New York to Washington. We had the customary wavings of handkerchiefs and flags, all along the way, and the usual—and it is all the more praise-worthy because it is usual—substantial welcome, in the shape of hot coffee, good bread and butter, and other substantials, served by the kind hands of the ladies and gentlemen of the Union Relief Association, in Philadelphia. Up to our arrival at Baltimore we made steady and reasonably rapid progress, reaching there at six o’clock Thursday morning. Then came a march of a mile and a half across the city, and six hours of tedious standing with stacked arms, near the Washington depot, varied by breakfast at the Relief Rooms. Then we were stowed away in freight cars and started out of the city. The train took 600 other troops besides our regiment, and numbered thirty-four heavily loaded cars, the men covering the tops of the cars as well as filling them inside. We made slow progress, waiting three or four hours at Annapolis Junction, and reached Washington at 9 o’clock Thursday night. Supper was given us in the not sweet or savory halls of the “Soldiers’ Rest,” near the Capitol, and in the huge white-washed barns attached thereto, the boys finally laid themselves down to sleep as best they might, on the hard floors, many preferring to take their blankets and sleep on the ground outside. To-day we are to go into camp somewhere about Washington.
The behavior of the regiment throughout the whole journey, elicited expressions of surprise and praise from the railroad and steamboat men and the citizens of every place at which we stopped. One of the managers of the Relief Association at Philadelphia said to me: “We have a good many regiments through here—thirteen this week, and on an average two regiments a day, now-a-days —and I think I have never seen a regiment of a thousand such universally well-behaved, orderly and gentlemanly men.”
I must close this hurried letter. Our company is all here to a man, and all are well.
Yours, B.
Friday, 10th. Sky clear and quite cold. Lieut. Spencer and I issued a good amount of clothing. About noon orders came to march. After a hurried dinner, saddled and lay about until most sundown. Rear guard. Had to wait till every wagon had started. Very dull business; probably the advance guard was in camp before we started. Every mile wagons were in to the hubs in mud. At midnight halted, saddles on, so many teams had given out. Fed and lay down with oilcloth for a coverlet. Had lent my shawl to Sergt. Randall.
Friday, 10th.—Left our resting-place at 2 A. M. Passed Salvisa at 4:30 A. M. 10 A. M., waiting for road to be opened so we can get to our brigade wagons. Have been without rations since day before yesterday. It is said rebels captured Brigadier-General Wood yesterday; secreted himself under box when his brigade had to surrender, but some hungry rebel turned it over and found him. Rumored Lee has taken Washington City. Troops passing in two heavy columns; cannonading ahead. Reported that Bragg’s and Buell’s forces were engaged all day yesterday and until 11 o’clock last night. Passed through Harrodsburg at sundown; camped one-half mile west of town in cedar thicket.
OCTOBER 10TH.—Mr. Brooks called this morning to get me to draft a passport bill, which he said he would get Congress to pass. I doubt it. I wrote the bill, however. He says fifteen or twenty members of Congress visit his house daily. They dine with him, and drink his old whisky. Mr. B. has a superb mansion on Clay Street, which he bought at a sacrifice. He made his money at trade. In one of the rooms Aaron Burr once dined with Chief Justice Marshall, and Marshall was assailed for it afterward by Mr. Jefferson. It was during Burr’s trial, and Marshall was his judge. Mr. Wickham, who was Burr’s counsel, then occupied the house, and gave a dinner party. Marshall did not know Burr was to be one of the guests. I got these facts from Mr. Foote, whom I met there the other evening.
A letter from Gen. Bragg to the President, indicates but too clearly that the people of Kentucky hesitate to risk the loss of property by joining us. Only one brigade has been recruited so far. The general says 50,000 more men are requisite. Can he have them? None!
October 10th. The army is still enjoying a rest, and has refitted, and barring additions to our ranks, is in as fine condition as ever.
The newspapers are getting anxious about another campaign, and it does look as though we were wasting valuable time, although none of us is particularly anxious for another fight. A great many new regiments have joined, and it is a thousand pities we can not send home their officers and distribute the men amongst the old regiments. What a tremendous difference that would make to the efficiency of the army.
On the 12th I rode over for the second time to Pry’s House, on the Antietam battlefield, to see General Richardson about Zook’s papers for promotion to be brigadier-general, but found the general hopelessly ill with no chance of recovery. I enjoyed the ride, although it was a little lonesome and tiresome. I have now letters from General Howard, Commanding Second division, General Caldwell, First brigade of our division, and General Stoneman, of the cavalry service, and the colonel’s brother, David, starts home with them to-morrow.
The Library of Congress title for this drawing is likely in error – “The Confederates under Stuart crossing the Potomac at McCoy’s Ferry to destroy the Baltimore & Ohio Canal.” This was another J.E.B. Stuart’s audacious circumnavigations of the Army of the Potomac.
The confederates are fording the river in the background and passing under the canal through a “road culvert.” The drawing, by Theodore R. Davis, was done about the same time as another drawing of his showing “The Rebels Destroying the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, as Seen from Fair View,” published in Harpers Weekly, November 8, 1862.
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Library of Congress image.
October 10, 1862. To-day a force of Union troops, under command of Lieutenant-Colonel John Boyle, of the Ninth Kentucky cavalry, entered Harrodsburgh, Kentucky, completely surprising and taking prisoners one thousand six hundred rebel troops, composed of infantry, artillery, and cavalry, being the rearguard of General Bragg’s army.—Governor Harris, of Tennessee, issued an order requiring the enrolment of all persons between the ages of eighteen and fifty-five, announcing that thirty days would be allowed for volunteering.
—A fight took place on the Upper Missouri River, about a hundred and fifty miles below Fort Berthold, between a party of miners, who were descending the river in a Mackinaw boat, and a large number of the Yancton Sioux tribe of Indians. The firing was kept up on both sides from nine o’clock in the morning until four in the afternoon, when the Indians gave up the chase, a good many of their number having been killed or wounded. Only one of the miners was wounded.—Sioux City Register, November 1.
—General J. E. B. Stuart’s rebel cavalry entered Chambersburgh, Pennsylvania, and destroyed over two hundred and fifty thousand dollars’ worth of government stores and private property.—(Doc. 1.)
—A Party of about one hundred rebel guerrillas entered Hawesville, Indiana, and for a time held possession of the town, but were finally driven out by the Cannelton Home Guard.—Governor Letcher, of Virginia, issued a proclamation putting in force an act of the Rebel Legislature of October first, prohibiting the removal of salt from the limits of the State of Virginia, and making provisions regulating its sale to people within the State.—(Doc. 3.)
—Henry Fairbank, of Colonel Bissell’s Engineer regiment, of the West; Albert Bacon, of the Fourteenth Illinois, and Robert Timmins, of the Thirty-fifth Indiana, who were captured in the battles of Shiloh and Corinth, this day made their escape from Macon, Georgia. After travelling for seventeen nights, and enduring many hardships, they finally reached the Union gunboat Western World, then blockading Doboy Sound, Ga., and were taken on board.
