October 23 — Still on picket. To-day we had an alarm at the front, caused by the explosion of a shell which some of our outer pickets found and threw in the fire just to see whether it would explode; and sure enough they saw, for the shell exploded with a report similar to a cannon, and sowed the fire and iron fragments around like a young volcano. The explosion stirred up a lively scene for a while among the reserve pickets. We rushed to our guns with the full expectation of seeing a Yankee battery appear over a hill about a mile in our front and open on us, but when we learned the cause of the sudden alarm all anticipations of a Yankee advance were expelled and quietude again reigned along our picket line.
Tuesday, October 23, 2012
Thursday, 23d—No news of importance. The roads are quite dusty.
The Army Hospitals—A Washington
Dust- Storm.
Camp Casey, East Capitol Hill,
Washington, Oct. 23, 1862.
Dear Free Press:
The health of a regiment is apt to be a matter of considerable interest to its members and to their friends. The health of the Twelfth may, I suppose, be called pretty good. The longest sick list, as yet, has been thirty-two privates and six officers. Only two or three of these can be called very sick. Some are merely home-sick, while on the other hand, there are to be added, in making a complete account a number suffering from ailments not severe enough to figure in the regimental reports. The men, as a general thing, have a repugnance to going into hospital. The hospital is a large tent, kept warm by stoves, in which the sick men lie on straw, placed on the ground, as the Government does not furnish cots. It looks a little hard; but ours is a good field hospital, and the inmates are better off than many in and around this city. The sick and wounded men in the permanent hospitals in Washington, Georgetown and Alexandria, number thirty-four thousand—an army in themselves. Many of these are in tents, for want of houses, and many, I fear, from what I hear, suffer from want of suitable care. The Government is now building on the plain here, not far from our camp, some immense one-story wooden buildings, for a general hospital, which, when completed, will give the covering of a roof to thousands who now shiver in the hospital tents.
To return to our own regiment and company,— our hospital steward, Mr. Hard, is a kind, skillful and faithful man; the hospital orderly, Wm. B. Lund, of Company C, is also a trusty and excellent man; the chaplain interests himself heartily in the sick men. So far as they can secure it, all our sick will have kind and suitable care. I do not speak of the surgeons. Dr. Conn, the assistant surgeon, has been sick, himself, with a fever, ever since our arrival. He is improving. None of our Burlington boys have been seriously ill, thus far, with the exception of W. W. Walker, who has a combined attack of fever and ague and dysentery,—and but one of our company (Collamer) can be called dangerously sick. He was suffering terribly with dysentery and vomiting yesterday. To-day he has been removed by Capt. Page to a comfortable private boarding-house in the city, and one of our best men left in charge of him.
On many, probably on the majority of the men, the out-door life and abundance of exercise have a very favorable effect. They eat heartily, sleep soundly, enjoy themselves pretty well, and grow fat. Most of them, however, have worn out, thus soon, the romance of soldiering, and are ready to own that the life of a private soldier is a rather rough one. There are some discomforts about tent-life on East Capitol Hill, it must be owned. What do you think of a bath of thirty-six hours’ duration in Washington dirt? That is what we have been enjoying yesterday and to-day. It had been quite dusty for a day or two and you must remember that we are on a bare surface of clay, denuded of grass and easily ground into the finest, most adhesive and most disagreeable dust in the world—the dust of Washington. It had sifted pretty thoroughly over and into every thing in our tents, when yesterday morning the wind began to blow. It commenced before light with a furious gust, which woke our thousand sleepers, and many other thousands around us, to find the dust pouring in upon us through every opening and crevice. We sprang up and with blankets and over-coats closed the openings; but the dust was still there, kept in constant motion by the slatting of our canvas walls, and the only way was to lie down again and take it as it came. What a dirty crew crawled out of the tents that morning! It was of little use to brush or wash —which latter habit, by the way, has to be indulged with moderation in our camp, for we are short of water. There is water in the Potomac, and in some wells around us, but these latter are drawn on constantly by other regiments as well as our own. The one nearest us, on which we relied almost entirely, has given out; and having to be brought a considerable distance, water is now a luxury if not a rarity, in the camp of the Twelfth. The wind kept up and the dust with it, and it is not fairly down yet. It is a peculiar life, when you must eat, breathe and drink earth, instead of food, air and water. You open your mouth, it is as if some one had put in a spoonful of pulverized clay. You put your hand to your hair, it feels like a dust brush. You touch your cheek, it is a clod. You place your finger in your ear, it is like running it into a hole in the ground. You draw from one of the dust holes in your clothes, the mud-stained rag which a few hours since was your clean handkerchief, and wipe a small pile of “sacred soil” from the corner of either eye. You look on the faces of your comrades, they are of the earth, earthy. The dust penetrates every fibre of every article of clothing; you feel dirty clear through. But it is of no use to attempt to describe it; it is unutterable—this plague of dust. It has not prevented, however, the company and battalion drills, and a brigade drill, by General Casey, of this brigade and the Eleventh Massachusetts Battery attached to it, came off to-day. It was emphatically a dusty affair.
There are frequent movements of regiments about us. More come than go. The twenty-fifth and Twenty-seventh Maine, and the Fourteenth New Hampshire, have arrived within a day or two, and are encamped close to us. The latter is under marching orders, however, and will be off to-morrow. Two or three of the neighboring regiments have fine brass bands, and so we have good music around us on some of the clear mornings. There is talk of organizing a band for the Twelfth from the musical talent in the ranks. Our drum major, Perley Downer, has been made brigade drum major of this provisional brigade. Company C, received him, after dress parade last evening when the order for his promotion was received, with presented arms and three cheers, to which Major Downer responded in a characteristic little speech.
Columbus, October 23, 1862.
Dear Uncle: — Laura married and off yesterday — all sensible and happy. We had a delightful visit to the boys and kin at Pickaway and Ross Counties. Lucy drove young Ned to Chillicothe and back from here. He is a safe horse and Platt expects to send him back to you when he begins to use his colt. My arm mends very slowly. Mother and all here well. I am to be colonel of [the] Twenty-third and to go to western Virginia. Shan’t go for seme weeks. Lucy goes home to Cincinnati next week — about the last of the week. My regards to all.
Sincerely,
S. Birchard. R. B. Hayes.
Thursday, 23rd. Bill and I did some washing. Johnson, Co. E, invited us to dinner—pork and crackers. Made inquiries about Sheldon. Found he had not sold his pony—never found it. Claimed he sold it to get “poker money.” Said he went immediately to playing poker with Co. F after leaving here. They said it was the middle of the P. M. N. asked him in and saw him. Would not admit it. Read St. Louis Republican of the 20th. Surprised to see Ohio so Democratic. Hope it won’t influence the president.
East Tennessee.
Thursday, 23d.—Left camp at 6:30 A. M. Crossed Powell’s River at 7 o’clock this morning; passed Tazewell at 11:30 A.M.
Corinth, Thursday, Oct. 23. The weather turned very windy and cold, water freezing in the night ¼ inch in thickness.
OCTOBER 23D.—The Gov. of Florida calls for aid, or he thinks his State will fall.
Albert Pike, writing from Texas, says if the Indian Territory be not attended to “instantly,” it will be lost.
Per contra, we have a rumor that Lee is recrossing the Potomac into Maryland.
October 23.—The British schooner Francis, of Nassau, N. P., was captured in the vicinity of Indian River, Florida, by the United States gunboat Sagamore.—The rebel authorities at Richmond were notified that aliens, or persons claiming the protection of foreign governments, would not be allowed to go North on the flag of trace boats.
—A fight took place near Waverly, Tenn., between a reconnoitring party of Union troops, consisting of about two hundred of the Eighty-third Illinois infantry, supported by one piece of artillery, under the command of Major Blott, and a large force of rebel guerrillas, which resulted, after an hour’s duration, in a complete rout of the latter, with a loss of about forty of their number killed and wounded, and thirty taken prisoners. The Unionists had one killed, and several wounded.—(Doc. 38.)
—General Rosecrans issued an order from his headquarters at Corinth, Miss., announcing that “the Seventeenth Iowa regiment, by its gallantry in the battle of Corinth, on the fourth, charging the enemy and capturing the flag of the Fortieth Mississippi, had amply atoned for its misfortune at Iuka, and stands among the honored regiments of his command.”—The United States gunboats Merrimac and Mississippi, with the Third, Fifth, and Forty-fourth Massachusetts regiments on board, left Boston this morning for Newbern, N. C.—The Richmond Dispatch of this date published a letter purporting to be from a nephew of Secretary Seward.—See Supplement.
—The combined rebel armies under Generals Bragg and E. Kirby Smith, reached Tennessee on their retreat from Kentucky this day. A correspondent, who accompanied the army, thus writes to the Sun, a rebel paper at Columbia, Tenn.: “The combined armies of Generals Bragg and Kirby Smith, including the forces of McCown, Stephenson, and Marshall, began their retrograde movement on the thirteenth instant, from Dick’s River, not far distant from Harrodsburgh, Ky., General Bragg’s force leading and passing out of the State ahead of General Smith. Many of the men are worn out with almost constant marching, by day and by night, pinched a great portion of the time by hunger and thirst, and having to subsist a good portion of the time on parched corn, pumpkins, etc, and drinking frequently water from holes. How different the feelings of officers and men of these armies now, compared with what they were upon their entrance into Kentucky two months since! It is unnecessary for me to say here that the expedition of the confederate forces into Kentucky, has resulted in a miserable failure.”—Columbia Sun. —A fight occurred at a bridge near Shelby Depot, Tenn., between a reconnoitring force of Union troops under the command of Colonel Stuart, Fifty-fifth Illinois, and a body of guerrillas, who had set fire to the bridge, resulting in a rout of the rebels, with a loss of eight or ten of their number killed.—The Fifteenth regiment of Vermont volunteers, commanded by Colonel Redfield Proctor, passed through Springfield, Mass., on the way to the scene of war.—Springfield Republican.
—A force of five hundred Union cavalry, under the command of Colonel Edward McCook, left Crab Orchard, Kentucky, this morning, and proceeded toward Point Lick and Big Hill, where they encountered several bands of Morgan’s guerrillas and Scott’s rebel cavalry, killing four or five of them and capturing their telegraph operator, with his apparatus; also, thirty-three wagons, partly loaded. Thence the Union forces proceeded to Richmond, where they captured two hundred sick and wounded rebels, whom they paroled.
—The ship Lafayette, of New-Haven, Captain Small, from New-York for Belfast, with a cargo of wheat and corn, was this day captured, and burned in latitude 40, longitude 64, by the rebel privateer Alabama.
