July 28 — Renewed our march this morning and marched to Culpeper Court House. The country between Sperryville and Culpeper Court House is mostly hilly and the farming land is undulating and rolling. We passed through Woodville, an apparently old village, situated seven miles from Sperryville.
Camped at Culpeper Court House.
[Diary] Tuesday, July 28, 1863.
Brought home from school to-day a heavy load of watermelons. We have decided to distribute the rest of the commission needles and thread in this manner. We give them in exchange for melons or anything eatable that the children have to sell, and that we can send to the hospitals for the wounded soldiers; we sent the fruit to the colored hospitals, because the goods were originally meant for them, and because the other hospitals have more friends to care for them. All the superintendents have melons offered by cartloads by the people, who seem as if they cannot give enough.
July 28—Left at 6 this morning, marched ten miles and halted on the mountain.
Abby Howland Woolsey to Harriet Gilman.
Fishkill, July, 1863.
It took so long for letters to come from Gettysburg, and Mother and Georgy had so little time to write, that we didn’t hear often. They have come themselves at last; arrived Tuesday, midnight. . . . Georgy came up here this noon, and we have been sitting together talking over all the strange scenes in those tents by the railroad, where 16,000 men have been fed and comforted in the last three weeks. Just imagine Mother in a straw flat and heavy Gettysburg boots, standing cooking soup for 200 men at a time, and distributing it in tin cups; or giving clean shirts to ragged rebels; or sitting on a pile of grocer’s boxes, under the shadow of a string of codfish, scribbling her notes to us.
She has many a memento of that strange battle—one, of a rebel lieutenant who died in her care; and a score of palmetto buttons from rebel coats—dirty but grateful, poor wretches; etc. . . . They say that the women of Gettysburg have done all they can, given the wounded all that the rebels had not taken, and have boarded the Sanitary and Christian Commission for nothing. At one house, where Mother and G. got their dinner one day, the woman could not be induced to take money. “No, ma’am,” she said, “I would not wish to have that sin on my soul when this war is over.”
We may go to Brattleboro for a month. But if Charley holds out the hope of his coming home, it won’t be worth while to go away. . . . We have not heard anything recently from “the army,”—I mean our modest portion of it in the form of Charley. He and all of them I am sure must be mortified at this escape of Lee at Gettysburg, scot free. He lost many men, but so did we. Pennsylvania is safe from “the invader”; but, dear me, our army has begun the hateful scramble all over Virginia again. . . .
Charley wrote that “Halleck urged forced marches after the retreating rebels and an immediate attack, as he had positive information that Lee was rapidly crossing the Potomac.” Charley adds, “but we have had nothing but forced marches since we left the Rappahannock, and we know that Lee isn’t crossing and cannot cross rapidly.” [He did, though.]
Headquarters Del. Dept.
Wilmington, Del.,
July 28th, 1863.
My dear Mother:
That I have not written you more punctually, the enclosed carte-de-visite must be my excuse. At last I have fulfilled my promise, and I trust the result may prove satisfactory to you. The carte was promised last Thursday, but only furnished yesterday. “There’s a twist to your nose” says the ingenuous artist, while taking his preliminary surveys. “Perhaps you fell down once, and injured it.” I answered mildly that I had no recollection of such a catastrophe. “Well,” he says, “it isn’t straight anyway.” Then adding with a sigh, “There are very few things that are straight in this world.” I suppose that this philosophic photographer is right.
After all I am going to be present to-morrow at Horace’s wedding. There really is so little doing, that I feel as though I could absent myself for a couple of days with propriety. The General says “All right,” so I shall go on to-night at 11:30. You have not written whether it is your intention to be present. It would be a great pleasure to me if I should find you among the guests. Never mind, Fall is near at hand, and my stay in the army is hastening to an end. I have much leisure time to read, and as it is long since I have had such an opportunity, I am indulging myself in books with a vengeance. My previous visit to New-York was merely to vary a little the monotony of Wilmington life, by the excitement of the mob-rule then prevailing in the former city. I there met Charley Dodge, who was serving as Chief of Cavalry on Gen. Wool’s staff. Charley contrived to give me some little employment, but all I did was not much in amount.
I dined a few days ago at _____’s. _____is a capital good fellow, but painfully lazy and objectless. Much attention and kindness has been shown us since we have been here by the Union people. Unionism means something in a slave state. The most violent secessionists would not venture to express half the disloyal sentiments that one hears from pretty good Union people in Connecticut. The Union people here, from their position, are forced to take such strong ground as to make the sentiment of New England seem cold by comparison. Much love.
Most affec’y.,
Will.
July 28th. Commences with pleasant weather and light westerly winds. The following is what has transpired this day:—At eight A. M. the U. S. steamer Virginia arrived; at three P. M. the Monongahela came down the river and anchored off the Richmond’s starboard quarter. Ship’s company engaged getting ship ready for sea.
28th. Passed the night very quietly in guard house. Deserters and drunken men filled the room. Novel place. Before noon went down to Provost and saw Mrs. Mills. At 3 P. M. we took the train under guard to Cincinnati. Lawyer Hall came with S. R. N. Pleasant ride down. Reached the city and after marching half an hour took quarters on fifth floor of Military Prison. Felt sorry for S. R. and friends. Felt jolly enough myself. Floor filthy and no blankets.
Tuesday, 28th.—At Atlanta, 1:30 A. M. Left Atlanta, at 7 A. M. At Tunnel Hill, 3 P. M., where Brother I. L. met me with buggy; found all well except brother; his wound doing very well.
28th.—The girls are in Richmond, staying at Dr. G’s. They went in to attend a tournament to be given to-day by General Jenkins’s Brigade, stationed near Richmond; but this morning the brigade was ordered to go South, and great was the disappointment of the young people. They cannot feel as we do during these gloomy times, but are always ready to catch the “passing pleasure as it flies,” forgetting that, in the best times,
“Pleasures are like poppies spread:
You seize the flower, the bloom is shed.”
And how much more uncertain are they now, when we literally cannot tell what a day may bring forth, and none of us know, when we arise in the morning, that we may not hear before noonday that we have been shorn of all that makes life dear!
Camp near Warrenton, Va.,
July 28, 1863.
Dear Parents:—
It is seldom that I have written so few letters after a great battle as I have since the battle of Gettysburg. I have had two good reasons, one that we have been almost constantly on the move since, and the other that I have not been able to write. I have said but little about it, not wishing to cause you anxiety, but for three weeks I have had all I could do to keep along in my place. The night of the 4th of July it rained tremendously, and I had little shelter and lay in water half an inch deep all night. I was too much exhausted to stand up or even to keep awake. I was wet through most of the time for a week after, and a very bad diarrhea set in which destroyed my appetite and made me very weak. I would not take doctor’s stuff, thinking I could wear it off as I always have done, but it held on well this time. At last I did take a physic, and when we got into Manassas Gap the blackberries cured me up. I feel more like myself to-day than I have for almost a month. Nothing but my horse and a firm resolve to hold out to the last has kept me out of the hospital this time. I could not have walked half a mile a good many days that I have rode fifteen. I could have found time to write a good many more letters if I had been well, but as it was, as soon as we stopped I could do nothing more than lie down and rest.
I received your letters of the 10th at Rectortown, on the Gap railroad. I was very glad to see them, the first I had heard from you since you received news of my safety. Two things in it surprised me—one was the direction—that letter was two days in the regiment before I got it because it was directed to the regiment. Always direct, “Headquarters Third Brigade, First Division, Fifth Army Corps, Washington, D. C.” Don’t put on regiment or company. Headquarters mail is pushed right through, when the large bags don’t come, and very often I don’t go to the regiment for three or four days, and any mail sent there waits till I come.
The other surprising thing was—”do come home.” As many soldiers have been spoiled by just such letters from anxious parents as any other way. Mother writes, “Come home; I do so want to see my boy if only for a little while.” Soldier writes that he would come if he could, and begins to think about it and chafe and fret at his bonds till he worries himself homesick and isn’t worth a row of pins. You have never said much to me of that sort, but it would not make much difference if you did. I made up my mind when I enlisted to stay till the matter was settled or my three years served out. As long as I am well I wouldn’t come home if I had a furlough in my hand, which, I might remark, is a place very difficult to get a furlough in nowadays. If I were sick and in a hospital, I should perhaps try to get home, but not while I stay in the field. This off and on soldiering is hard on a person’s nerves. You will be the more glad to see me when I have been gone three long years.
I am very glad, Mother, that you like your new home so well. Aristocracy in these days ought to be at a discount. Shoddycracy is pretty large in New York, they say, the hideous offspring of the monster war. I am afraid the army would not suit you very well on that very account, supposing you could be in it. One of the officers of my own company can write no more than his own name, and that scarcely legible, yet military rules require me always to touch my cap when I speak to him, as an acknowledgment of his superiority.
You ask if I have any fruit. I have had but little. Cherries have been plenty in the country we passed through, but I have had little chance to get them. We never know at what minute we shall move. Orders come at daylight, at sunset, at noon, at midnight, “Prepare to march immediately,” and the first thing is—”Bugler sound the general” (the call to strike tents), so that I am obliged to be always at my post. The men in the regiments scatter out in the country, get fruit and buy bread and pies, but I can’t leave and so don’t get much. Blackberries I have had a better chance at, for they are everywhere. You may know how close I am kept when I tell you that I have been trying for a month to see Edwin Willcox, and, though he has slept within half or a quarter of a mile from me a good many nights, I have never seen him yet.
I wish you would put up two or three cans of fruit for me, so that, if we go into winter quarters again, you can send them to me. Fruit is something I miss as much as anything in the army. The sutler makes no bones of charging seventy-five cents for a tumblerful of jelly.
I wish you would send me, if you can get it, next time you write, a little camphor gum and assafœtida. If you cannot get the latter send the camphor alone, just a little, what you can put in a letter. I want it to drive away lice.
In regard to that expression that shocked you so much. I am sure I meant nothing irreverent, and, as Father remarked, it is a common expression in the army for a hot reception of the enemy. Used in that sense, it does not seem so inappropriate, for such fighting, such bloody carnage belongs more to demons than to this fair earth. No reference to anything in their condition after death was intended. That is not for us to judge.
I had intended to write more, but a heavy shower is coming up for which I must prepare, and I shall have no more time before the mail closes.
We expect to rest here a little while, hope to, at least.
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