Huntsville, Friday, March 11. Felt fresh this morning, notwithstanding the guard duty of last night. At 9 A. M. took a stroll up Russell Hill. Found violets in bloom, picked a bouquet of them with peach and plum blossoms and put them on my desk. Evans out in charge of foraging train, with fifteen men. General Matthies was seen in camp to-day. The last time I saw him was leaving the field of Mission Ridge covered with blood, a sturdy and honest old general, loved by all his command. Congratulatory resolutions read at parade from Congress to Sherman and his men, also an order from John A. Logan to protect fences and houses. All advantages given to the citizens to raise their own subsistence. Boys all jolly. Games of ball on all day and late in the evening.
Tuesday, March 11, 2014
Camp White, March 11, 1864.
Dear Uncle: — Home again with Lucy and all the boys — well and happy. Birch did not meet his brothers until he saw them here last night. Three happier boys I never saw. They are all very well. — Love to all.
Sincerely,
R. B. Hayes.
S. Birchard.
Jacksonville, Fla.,
March 11, 1864.
Dear Sister L.:—
Somebody has said that is the sweetest word of endearment in the language, and I believe it. Beside it other terms seem to me in my present mood mawkish and sentimental. Since that April day when the red dawn of this cruel war was just breaking over our country, and with tear-wet face you bade me good-bye and God speed, no other woman has been so dear to me. Perhaps my letters and my language may not have shown it, but it is true. There may be a touch of Lara or Conrad the Corsair in my character. I know my heart is not often visible in my face, but when I came home and you were so glad to see me that you could not think even where your husband was, do not imagine that because I was not affected in the same way, or that there were no tears of joy in my eyes, I did not feel one of the greatest joys of my life that day.
H. has never seemed to me like you. Perhaps the greater difference in our ages may account for this, and she is so shy and strange, she is really getting to be almost a stranger. She has changed very much since I left home, and I have not kept pace with the changes, so infrequent have been her letters, and her letters, too, are not a part of or like herself. They are only the family gossip, but you, in all this time of absence have been my dear sister, and, when sitting round the camp fire a comrade has spoken of his sister, I have mentioned mine with reverent love and tenderness. And often I have thought but not spoken of how she has followed me in her thoughts and dreams, mayhap, over weary roads and through the smoke and din of battle, or in the tiresome hours of winter quarters followed me with the untold wealth of a sister’s love.
Often I have thought and felt I was not worthy of all that wealth of sisterly pride and affection lavished on me, but, because I was not worthy, I have craved it all the more. Brothers are not like a sister. Perhaps I may be wanting in natural affection, but my younger brothers never seemed so very dear to me. At home I used to be impatient of their restless freaks, and though I would have resented very quickly a wrong done to them by an outsider, yet I never troubled myself much about them. E. is getting to be a man, and, as his strength and manhood develop, my admiration for him increases. In fact, to see our letters, you would think we constitute a mutual admiration society, but E. is not a woman and not my sister. And as a proof of my love for you, have I not written you often? And how anxiously I have watched the mails for your letters, you will never know.
March 11th.—Letters from home, including one from my husband’s father, now over ninety, written with his own hand, and certainly his own mind still. I quote: “Bad times; worse coming. Starvation stares me in the face. Neither John’s nor James’s overseer will sell me any corn.” Now, what has the government to do with the fact that on all his plantations he made corn enough to last for the whole year, and by the end of January his negroes had stolen it all? Poor old man, he has fallen on evil days, after a long life of ease and prosperity.
To-day, I read The Blithedale Romance. Blithedale leaves such an unpleasant impression. I like pleasant, kindly stories, now that we are so harrowed by real life. Tragedy is for our hours of ease.
March 11.—We have very few patients at present. I have been very busy fixing up my old clothes. It takes much more time to make the old clothes look well than to make new ones. I often wonder what our Yankee sisters would say if they saw what shifts we are put to. I suppose they think it grieves us, but they are mistaken, for it is a subject of mirth, as we, like the men, have become philosophers.
Miss W.’s sister lately paid her a visit. She is a high-spirited Louisiana girl. She has just left school, and intends, after paying a visit to some relatives in East Georgia, to go with another lady and take charge of a hospital in West Point, Ga. Dr. Oslin, the surgeon in charge there, says he will have no ladies in his hospital excepting educated and refined ones. At present he has none. She is quite as enthusiastic as her sister on the subject of Louisiana, and quarreled with one of the nurses, a native of Georgia, but a member of a Louisiana regiment, because he called himself a Louisianian.
There has been a skirmish near Dalton. We drove the enemy back to their intrenchments.
Friday, 11th—The Iowa Brigade turned over their tents and camp equippage to the general quartermaster, preparatory to going up the river. General Grant is now at the head of all the armies of the United States, just where we have wanted him ever since the surrender of Vicksburg.[1]
[1] After Vicksburg, General Grant was sent to Chattanooga, Tennessee, and succeeded in raising the siege there, and then at Knoxville, defeating two Confederate armies all in the space of a few days. That covered Grant with glory in the estimation of us Western men, and we then declared that he was the man to send to Washington, D. C, and to take command of the Eastern as well as the Western army.—A. G. D.
March 11, Friday. A pleasant meeting of the Cabinet, and about the time we had concluded General Grant was announced. He had just returned from a visit to the Army of the Potomac, and appeared to better advantage than when I first saw him, but he is without presence. After a very brief interview, he remarked to the President that he should leave this P.M. for Nashville, to return in about two weeks, and should be glad to see the Secretary of War and General Halleck before he left. There was in his deportment little of the dignity and bearing of the soldier but more of an air of business than his first appearance indicated, but he showed latent power.
I called this evening on Governor Morgan to consult in regard to a suitable lawyer in New York to take charge of our proceedings with contractors and others. He recommends Bliss (George Bliss, Esq., was retained by Scofield, and Mr. Nathaniel Wilson was engaged by the Navy Department) as on the whole the best and most fitting person we could have. Says he is intimate with Olcott, and really his prompter. I am not satisfied with intrusting this matter entirely to Olcott, who is expected here tomorrow.
March 11.—A detachment of the Seventh Tennessee cavalry, commanded by Colonel Hawkins, captured eleven guerrillas in the vicinity of Union City, Ky.—The rebel sloop Hannah, was captured by the Beauregard, off Mosquito Inlet, Ga.—The United States steamer Aroostook captured, in latitude twenty-eight degrees fifty minutes north, longitude ninety-five degrees five minutes west, the British schooner M. P. Burton, loaded with iron and shot. She cleared from Havana, and purported to be bound to Matamoras. When first seen she was steering direct for Velasco, some two hundred miles out of her course.— Admiral Farragut’s Report.
—The schooner Linda, with an assorted cargo, was captured off Mosquito Inlet, by the National vessels Beauregard and Norfolk Packet.
by John Beauchamp Jones
MARCH 11TH.—Rained all night—a calm, warm rain. Calm and warm to-day, with light fog, but no rain.
It is now supposed the clerks (who saved the city) will be kept here to defend it.
March 11th. Up to this date the weather has been very bad. We are also short of rations. On picket every other night. Late today our tents arrived, and a good supply of rations. We shall have to put in another night in the cold old barn. Somewhat discouraged over our present condition. It is all in the life of a soldier, who must meet all discouragements and make the best of it as the days come and go.
