Etowah Bridge, Tuesday, Sept. 6. My health is very good. Weather very oppressive. Little rain during the afternoon. No trains from the North. Rations being hauled to Atlanta from Marietta to subsist the army on.
September 2014
Camp near Petersburg, September 6th, 1864.
Our hospital is now pleasantly situated about three miles from the old ground and two miles from division headquarters. The grounds are laid out in the form of a shield, which is the badge of the Ninth Corps. Evergreen trees are planted around it, in double rows. Arches wound with twigs of evergreen; in fact, everything is arranged with taste, and at great expenditure of labor. Tents were nearly all pitched when I arrived with the last load. About sundown a division of the Second Corps marched past, and formed in line but a few rods distant. In a few minutes they were engaged in throwing up breastworks. I had received that truant letter of August 20th, which had miscarried, and had lighted a candle with a view to answer it, when the order came, “Pack up, boys, and get ready to move immediately.” In an hour tents were struck and loaded, the sick put in ambulances and the train in line, with orders to “move out a mile and await orders.”
This awaiting orders is never very agreeable, and a heavy thunderstorm did not add greatly to our enjoyment on this occasion. Seeing no prospect of an early move, my comrade and I lay down upon the ground, with a rubber under us, and a rubber over us, and “sweetly slept till break o’ day.” Soon as fairly light the train moved on, and at 8 o’clock we were in our old camp again, still to await orders. It is now 9 p. m., and we are in the same “blissful state of glorious uncertainty.” The sick remain in the ambulances. A railroad is being laid to connect City Point with the Weldon Road. It passes within a few rods of us. Nearly a mile of track is laid each day.
Tuesday, September 6. — Encounter between Colonel Marshall and Major Filler. Was in the navy room in the evening. Night quite cool.
September 6 — In this camp we are spending some of our happiest soldier days. The weather is pleasant and the foraging is superfine; the cornfields are in first-class order and are giving the richest kind of milk just now.
Every few nights our singing club goes to some farmhouse or village cottage, to while away the gliding hours with mirth and song in mutual, voluntary, and pleasant exchange for milk and pie. Truly war can ever furnish a checkered pathway for mortal man to tread, its vicissitudinous winding course inevitably lying through the exciting scenes of the battle-field, where its bloody track is oft times thickly strewn with the dead and dying, and where many a stalwart castle of hope lies stilled in death, buried in the ruins and wreck of the fray. Then again, if fortune smiles and the storm of battle is successfully weathered, the pathway of duty often still leads to distant fields where space has to be annihilated by forced and weary marches, that may end in a successful raid or a ruinous rout. And when the spasmodic waves of war have rolled too wildly and high, and dashed themselves into harmless spray so that they have to sink back to the sleeping billow to gain and gather new strength, then the dull and heavy routine of camp life drags and creeps slowly by and the watch fires of contentment and happiness often burn low. But, with all the discomforts, privations, ennui, and onerous sameness of camp life, the fatiguing march, and the dismal horrors of the battle-field, the cloud of discouragement and despondency can never dip so low as to blot out every ray of cheering pleasure that now and then rifts the war cloud and peeps through the blackness and smiles and glows and shines with charming splendor, even between the wrinkles on war’s grim front; for to-day we are sojourning in pleasure’s cheering light, and to-morrow we may be on the way to the field of war’s dread alarms.
Last night we were out on a serenade, and as the sentimental words,
..
“When in thy dreaming,
Moons like these shall shine again,
And daylight beaming,
Prove thy dreams are vain,
Wilt thou not relenting,
For thy absent lover sigh,
In thy heart consenting,
To a prayer gone by,”
..
floated away on the wings of song through the shimmering moonlight, the soft stilly breathing of their inspiration evoluted a chorus of milk and pie garnished with the smiles and charms of pretty, youthful maidens. Pleasurable amenities like these, fitted in with the duties of the field, make sunny spots that sparkle and glow in the mosaic patchwork that is spread along the soldier’s ever-changing pathway, and their sweet light will tinge with roseate hue the distant skies that bend over the gateway of the future.
September 6, 1864.
Lay quiet all day. Some Rebel cavalry followed us up and fired a few shots into our regiment’s works from the old Rebel fort, but Osterhaus swung his pickets around and gobbled 25 of them, and the rest troubled us no more.
Colonel Lyon’s Letters.
Headquarters, R. R. Defenses, M. & C. R. R., Huntsville, Ala., Sept. 6, 1864.—I give you the name of my establishment. I think it quite showy. We have just located this afternoon. We have nice quarters. The Adjutant and I each have a large, carpeted, well furnished room, in the second story of a large mansion very pleasantly located. We have a kitchen in the back yard, where we are to eat and where old Minty, our cook, lives. Jerry, Johnny, and our clerk have pitched their tents just back of the house, and we have altogether the coziest headquarters you ever saw.
I expect communications will be opened to Nashville by tomorrow, via Stevenson. You will learn enough of Wheeler’s raid by the newspapers not to be surprised at getting no letters from me. Wheeler is west of us, and our troops are driving him toward the Muscle Shoals. General Steadman went through here today with a considerable force to join Rousseau and Granger.
There is quite a large force of guerrillas south of the railroad on my beat that I intend to drive out as soon as General Granger returns and I can get some cavalry.
Lieut. Graham was coming through with our wagon train, and camped last night four miles out of Woodville. I hear he was attacked in the night and that Company F, which had just reached Woodville, has gone out to help him. I do not know the result, but shall in a few hours.
Company F had a man shot and captured the night before they left the river. He was carrying dispatches, and is supposed to be mortally wounded. So you see we have war even here.
6th. Tuesday. Relieved at dark. Spent the day getting papers signed. Letter from home. Oats and rations. Not in camp till after dark. Pleasant place.
by John Beauchamp Jones
SEPTEMBER 6TH.—Raining moderately, and cool.
Gen. Bragg has taken the Bureau of Conscription in hand, sinceCol. August, “acting superintendent,” wrote him a “disrespectful and insubordinate” note. He required a report of the officers in the bureau, from Lieut.-Col. Lay, “Acting Superintendent,”—there have been three “acting superintendents” during the last three days, —and Col. Lay furnished it. On this Gen. B. remarks that one young and able-bodied colonel (August) was here while his regiment was in the field, and recommended that he be permitted to have an opportunity to see some “service” before the war is ended, and military experience, which will teach him to be more respectful to seniors, etc.; and that the able-bodied lieutenant-colonel (Lay), from whom he can get no report of inspections, and who remains here idle most of his time, could render more efficient service in the field.
And he thought Lieut. Goldthwait, relative of the Assistant Secretary of War, in the bureau, was performing functions that would better pertain to an older and more experienced man. In short, the whole organization required modification.
These papers, with this indorsement, being sent to the President, that functionary sends them to the Secretary of War, with an indorsement intimating that such remarks from Gen. Bragg required action. Here’s a row! Perhaps the Secretary himself may flare up, and charge Gen. B. with interference, etc.;—but no, he must see that Gen. B. is acting with the concurrence of the President.
But the Assistant Secretary,Col. August, Lieut.-Col. Lay, etc. will be like so many hornets stirred up with a pole, and no doubt they are rich enough to defy the emoluments of office.
Monday, 5th.—Just after dark last night, Yanks began playing bands and yelling at a furious rate, when two of our batteries turned loose on them, and stopped their yelling for awhile. The Chicago Convention nominated George B. McClelland for the presidency. Notified that L. C. Williams is dead from his wounds.
September 5th. Cold cloudy morning. All is quiet. We have a long line of earthworks near Berryville, facing south. This seems to be another case of waiting and watching. Guarding the wagon train which remains parked. Nothing special has taken place today, only a cold rain tonight, making us uncomfortable.
