Thursday, 5th—Boys had grand snowball. Gave Col. Harrison a taste. Came up Columbia road, twenty miles, to little village of Wharton, took up quarters. We went up creek three miles and back close to Headquarters and camped in road, making fires of the fence. I got fodder and we spread it on the snow and blankets on fodder; slept comfortably.
Tuesday, February 5, 2013
February 5th, Thursday night.
A letter from Lavinia has come to me all the way from California. How happy it made me, though written so long ago! Only the 30th of June! Lavinia has changed, changed. There is a sad, worn-out tone in every line; it sounds old, as though she had lived years and years ago and was writing as though she were dead and buried long since. Lavinia, whose letters used to keep me in sunshine for weeks at a time! Well! no wonder she is sad. All these dreary years from home, with so faint a hope of ever again seeing it, and all these sorrows and troubles that have befallen us, combined, are not calculated to make her happy. But I wish she had kept her cheerful heart. Well, perhaps it is easier for us to be cheerful and happy, knowing the full extent of our calamities, than it is for her, knowing so little and having just cause to fear so much. Courage! Better days are coming! And then I’ll have many a funny tale to tell her of the days when the Yankees kept us on the qui vive, or made us run for our lives. It will “tell” merrily; be almost as lively as those running days were. One of my chief regrets over my helplessness is that I will not be able to run in the next stampede. I used to enjoy it. Oh, the days gone by, the dreary days, when, cut off from our own people, and surrounded by Yankees, we used to catch up any crumb of news favorable to our side that was smuggled into town, and the Brunots and I would write each other little dispatches of consolation and send them by little negroes! Those were dismal days. Yet how my spirits would rise when the long roll would beat, and we would prepare for flight!
February 5, Thursday. Seward sent me this morning a scary dispatch which he proposed to give each of the foreign ministers, in relation to the blockade at Galveston, which he, unwisely, improperly, and without knowledge of the facts, admits has been raised, but which he informs them will be again immediately enforced. I was exceedingly annoyed that he should propose to issue such a document under any circumstances, and especially without consultation. It is one of those unfortunate assumptions, pregnant with error, in which he sometimes indulges. I toned and softened his paper down in several places, but told the clerk to give Mr. Seward my compliments and say to him I totally objected to his sending out such a paper.
February 5—Resumed our promenade at 7 this morning, and for a change it is raining hard. Therefore the snow is melting. Consequently, the roads are nice and soft. Halted at 3 this evening—still raining. We made ourselves as comfortable as possible— made a good fire to dry ourselves by, but the worst of it is we have no rations, and the wagons are behind. We went to sleep in our wet clothing, with a cup of coffee as our supper. It rained and snowed all night.
5th. Continued the reading of “Tom Brown.” The talk of consolidation is making the boys very much dissatisfied. There will be more deserters. In the evening recited my lesson.
Thursday, 5th—Weather pleasant. I was detailed to go out on picket, but the order was countermanded. There is some talk of our leaving the place. It is reported in camp that on account of the flood the work on the canal had to be given up, and that an effort would be made to turn the current of the river through the canal, thus letting the river cut it.
Washington Thursday Feb’y 5th 1863.
I hardly know how to fill out a page tonight. It has been cold and Stormy having snowed most of the day, tonight the snow is more like rain and the weather has moderated. I was on the Ave after I left the office and bought a pair of rubbers, then came home directly to my room, which I have not left since except for dinner. I have been writing over a couple pages of foolscap upon the Analogy which exists betwen a Nation and an individual. In a Nation the whole Territory may be compared to the body of a man. The inhabitants are the living Soul. The Mountains are the Bones. The Rivers and roads and canals are the veins and arteries. Trade and Commerce is the Blood which circulates through them & the industrial system of the Nation is the real nutriment which gives life and vigor to the body giving to the Blood its sustaining and life giving principle. I pursued the comparison much farther. I also wrote some verses for Julias Album should they suit her. There is no news worthy of notice today. I have been in the office as usual. The concert proved a “Sell” to the Committee. Ostrander deceived them in every way. But has now time to repent as he was arrested before the concert yesterday for obtaining property by false pretenses and is now in Jail. He has been a Clerk in the Land office for something over a year. But his game is up now. Past 11 o’clock.
Buntyn Station, Thursday, Feb. 5. About three inches of snow. Quite cold all day. E. W. E. went to town; was called on to guard S. Sanger for discharging a revolver. Very cold.
FEBRUARY 5TH.—It snowed again last night. Tuesday night the mercury was 8° below zero.
A dispatch from Gen. Beauregard says sixty sail of the enemy have left Beaufort, N. C., for Charleston. A British frigate (Cadmus) has arrived at Charleston with intelligence that the Federal fleet of gun-boats will attack the city immediately; and that the British consul is ordered away by the Minister at Washington. The attack will be by sea and land. God help Beauregard in this fearful ordeal!
Pickets of the First Louisiana “Native Guard” Guarding the New Orleans, Opelousas, and Great Western Railroad. (March 7, 1863 issue of Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper.)
_______________
Scenes in Louisiana.
Our artist has sent some sketches which illustrate, in a striking degree, some novel phases of life, both military and civil, which the present struggle is involved. The fact of black regiments being actively employed is not an novelty, since they have been for some time part of the British military system, which, with its usual commonsense, avails itself of every aid in the pursuit of its objects. Our Artist says that among the cypress swamps of Louisiana Negro soldiers are invaluable, and accompanies his sketch of the pickets of the first Louisiana native troops, guarding the New Orleans, hope Eleusis and Great Western Railroad, with some remarks which we quote:
“In this swamp in the wilderness the ‘
soldiers’ are eminently useful. The melancholy solitude, with the spectral cypress trees, which seem to stand in silent despair, like nature’s sentinels waving in the air wreathes of grey funereal moss, to warn all human beings of latent pestilence around, though unendurable to our soldiers of the north, seems an elysium to these sable soldiers, for the swampy forest has no horrors to them. Impervious to miasma, they only see the home of the coon, the possum and the copperhead, so that with ‘de gun that Massa Sam gib ‘em’ they have around them all the essential elements of colored happiness, except ladies’ society.”
