Nashville, Monday, Jan. 16. In camp. I still feel pretty well. My throat is very sore. Postules begin to fill and turn white, guess it is smallpox. I am ordered to the smallpox hospital, and am now awaiting the ambulance. I must leave everything, as I could bring nothing away. I feel sorry to leave the boys but would not stay to spread the contagion among them. So, dear Journal, I must bid you good-bye until I return. God grant that it may not be long. I anticipate but a short siege, am astonished to find it so easy thus far. Adieu.
January 2015
16th. Monday. Read some. Application for an officer and 8 sergeants made to go home on recruiting service. Officers’ meeting. Determined to have a history of the 2nd Ohio. Newton, Houghton and Dr. McReynold as committee to get up a plan.
January 16th.—Clear and frosty.
We learn vaguely that the attack on the defenses of Wilmington has been progressing since Friday, and that the enemy’s land forces have effected a lodgment between Fort Fisher and the town.
Another “peace” visitor has arrived—Hon. Mr. Singleton, of the United States Congress. It is said that the President (Confederate States) has pledged himself to appoint commissioners to fix terms of peace. This is but a forlorn-hope. No terms of peace are contemplated by any of these visitors but on the basis of reconstruction; and their utmost liberality could reach no further than a permission for the Southern States to decide, in convention, the question of emancipation. The President having suggested, however, the propriety of putting the negroes into the service, and emancipating them afterward, has aroused the fears and suspicions of many of the people; and but few have confidence in the integrity of the Secretary of State. Hence the universal gloom and despondency of the croakers. There may be difficulty in replenishing the Federal armies, and they may be depleted by spring; and if so, Gen. Lee may be able to make another grand campaign with the men and material now at his command. The issue of the next campaign may inaugurate real negotiations. Wilmington may be taken, blockade-running may cease; but we have ammunition and other stores for another campaign.
At last we have a dispatch from Gen. Lee, announcing the fall of Fort Fisher. Most of the garrison, supposed to be 1500, were taken.
Gold was $70 for $1 on Saturday: what will it be to-day or tomorrow?
A voluminous correspondence is going on between Mr. Conrad (secret agent to arrest disloyal men endeavoring to cross the Potomac) and Mr. Secretary Seddon. Mr. Foote, arrested by their great skill, has applied, indignantly, for a writ of habeas corpus. Thus the time of our great dignitaries is consumed removing molehills, while mountains are looming up everywhere.
The following dispatch was received here at 11 A.M. to-day from Gen. Bragg’s A. D. C.: “January 15th, 1865.—Official information from Gen. Whiting, at Fort Fisher, up to 8 o’clock this evening, reports enemy’s attack on fort unsuccessful. Fresh troops are being sent to him.”
This does not agree with the dispatch from Gen. Lee. It must have been taken last night, and after the hour indicated. Gen. Lee certainly says it has fallen. It is gone, and I fear the “reinforcements” also—with Gen. Whiting “to boot.”
Alas for Bragg the unfortunate! He seems to be another Boabdil the Unlucky.
Dr. Woodbridge announced in the Monumental Church, yesterday, that only five ladies had responded to the call to knit socks for the soldiers! A rich congregation, too. My daughters (poor) were among the five, and handed him several pairs. They sent one pair to their cousin S. Custis, Clingman’s brigade, Hoke’s North Carolina division.
Mr. Lewis, disbursing clerk of Post-Office Department, has sent in a communication asking an investigation of the conduct of Mr. Peck, agent to buy supplies for clerks. What will Mr. Seddon do now?
The Commissary-General says 100,000 bushels corn for Lee’s army may be got in Southwest Virginia.
Monday, 16th—All is quiet in front. Company E moved back four or five miles to a large rebel fort on the main road to Beaufort, and on an inlet of the ocean. We are to remain here on picket duty until further orders. The main part of the regiment has fortified. Our company put up the “ranches” on a causeway.
Monday, 16th.—Ordered to drill, but regiment at first refused; but finally, at the request of company officers, and for their sakes, drilled a little. There will be trouble if asked to drill much when so nearly worn out.
January 16th.—My husband is at home once more—for how long, I do not know. His aides fill the house, and a group of hopelessly wounded haunt the place. The drilling and the marching go on outside. It rains a flood, with freshet after freshet. The forces of nature are befriending us, for our enemies have to make their way through swamps.
A month ago my husband wrote me a letter which I promptly suppressed after showing it to Mrs. McCord. He warned us to make ready, for the end had come. Our resources were exhausted, and the means of resistance could not be found. We could not bring ourselves to believe it, and now, he thinks, with the railroad all blown up, the swamps made impassable by the freshets, which have no time to subside, so constant is the rain, and the negroes utterly apathetic (would they be so if they saw us triumphant?), if we had but an army to seize the opportunity we might do something; but there are no troops; that is the real trouble.
To-day Mrs. McCord exchanged $16,000 in Confederate bills for $300 in gold—sixteen thousand for three hundred.
Colonel Lyon’s Letters.
Huntsville, Ala., Sun. Eve., Jan. 15, 1865.—Sunday brings me but little respite from labor, and it is late in the evening before I can find time to write to you my usual Sunday letter.
I returned last evening from a trip of two days up the railroad. My principal business was to post and rearrange the troops along the line. I was on the cars all night Friday night, and of course I came home pretty well tired out. Captain Stevens of the 18th Michigan, Brigade Inspector, went with me. I went to Stevenson.
We have quite a family now, the Brigade Staff being with me, three officers and three or four clerks and orderlies. This will only last, however, until Colonel Doolittle’s return. We expect him every day.
I have just received the commissions for the new officers. They are Kummel, Lieut.-Colonel; Cobb, Captain; Auld, 1st Lieut, and Gibbs, 2d Lieut., Co. A. Hall, Captain, and Cheney, 1st Lieut., Co. B. Fish, Captain; Bardwell, 1st Lieut.; Loucks, 2d Lieut., Co. C. Patchin, 1st Lieut., Co. D. Briggs, 1st Lieut., Co. F. Pratt, 1st Lieut., and Beckwith, 2d Lieut., Co. H. Wemple, Captain, and Hollister, 1st Lieut., Co. K. The rest are the old officers. Captain Randall writes me that under a late order he is entitled to be mustered out of the service and is going out. He veteranized, you know. If there is such an order I think Captains Blake and Noyes, Lieutenant Balis, perhaps the Quartermaster and Dr. Evans, will go out, which will give a chance for more promotions. I intend to make Matson a Lieutenant in Company G, unless the Quartermaster goes out, in which case I shall probably give him that position.
Chapin’s Farm, Va..
Sunday, Jan. 15, 1865, midnight.
Dear Sister L.:—
My diary has ceased to be. It is now the middle of January, 1865, and I have made no entries in it since I left the hospital, and as I am about to send it to you lest it share the fate of my other diaries in the early part of the war, and in the hope that some of it may interest you, I can think of nothing better than to fill up a few more pages with some recollections, and records of the regiment, and of myself.
As you know from my letters, I reached the regiment on the 6th of October, having left the hospital before I was strong enough for duty in the line, with the expectation of being regimental adjutant. I found Lieutenant Evans already in the office, and while Major Wagner was deliberating whether it was best to return him to his company and make me adjutant, Lieutenant Burrows was made brigade quartermaster and the major at once detailed me to act as regimental quartermaster in his place, and “A. R. O. M.” I have been ever since.
The regiment was then lying in the works to the right of the rebel Fort Harrison, which was taken by our forces on the 29th of September, and the name since changed to Fort Burnham in honor of Brigadier General Burnham who was killed in the charge which captured the fort.
On the 13th of October the reconnoisgance on the Darby Road was made. As a military success or a movement of importance in any respect, it is not worth mention, but it is a memorable day to me on account of the death of my dearest and best army friend. Captain A. G. Dickey.
The “Eighth” was deployed as skirmishers early in the morning and covered the front of the division. Three companies were held in reserve and Captain Dickey had command of those companies. I left my place at the train on learning that fighting was in progress and came up to the front to learn what was being done. I found the division in a belt of woods facing a line of the enemy’s works and the skirmish line pushed well up to those works. The reserve was a few rods in rear of the line and they had remained in that position some three hours. The skirmishers were pretty well concealed and kept up a desultory fire wherever they could see any of the enemy, and the rebels did the same. An occasional bullet cut through the bushes near the reserves, but I did not think it a place of particular danger, or having no particular business I should not have been there. As it was I sat down on the ground by the captain and stayed two or three hours, and then thinking that not much more would be done that day and that I should have little enough time to get back to the train before night, I started to return. The captain said to me as I left, in that bantering style so common among soldiers, “Take care of yourself, Norton, this is no place for quartermasters.” and I retorted in similar style. It was the last word he ever spoke to me.
That night as I sat in my tent, a lieutenant told me that one of our captains was killed, and on my mentioning their names he said it was Dickey. I could not believe it, but the next morning the news was confirmed.
It was too true. Not ten minutes after I left, one of those occasional bullets had crashed through his brain. He lived, or breathed rather, for forty-eight hours after, but I could not go to see him.
By and by they brought him to me—all that was left of my friend lay before me on a stretcher in an ambulance.
Just after the battle of Olustee he had given me the address of his mother (he had no father) and his sister, and I had given him your address and my father’s, and we promised each other that if anything occurred, (we expressed it in that way with the natural dread of speaking of death) that if anything occurred to one, and the other was spared he should write to our friends the sad news. The sad fulfilment of the promise was mine, and I took his body to the embalmer’s and had it prepared and sent to his friends, as I knew he would have done for me under like circumstances. It was all I could do, and now I sit and gaze on his picture and think of all his noble, manly, generous qualities and I know how his mother and his sister must mourn for him, but our grief can never return him to us.
“They, who the tasks of life took up so gladly
And bore them onward with exultant palm,
Now graveyard grasses wave above them sadly,
Their still hands folded to a changeless calm.
Gone! Gone! The gay leaves twinkle in the summer shining,
The light winds whisper o’er the grassy lea,
And song and fragrance gentle links are twining.
But oh ! beloved and lost ones, where are ye?”
Well, dear sister, I send you my diary, such as it is. There will be much of it that you cannot understand and much that would not interest you if you could. There are many references to persons who are strange to you, and but very little of any part will pay you for the reading. To me, I have a fancy that it will be very interesting in after years. It will recall to me scenes and incidents that without it I should have forgotten. I have kept it in a careless, desultory manner, and with no expectation that it would interest any but myself. Indeed a diary would be more appropriately named an “I-ary,” for there is little else but “I” in it. Still, if you find any amusement or enjoyment in it, it will be an additional source of pleasure to me. I ask you to keep it for me, and perhaps at some future time we may look it over together and pass a pleasant hour in so doing.
Nashville, Sunday, Jan. 15. Pelt pretty smart this morning. Up and ate quite a breakfast. The eruptions much larger, feel a little sore. Doctor came to see me after dinner and has pronounced it a case of varioloid. Ordered us to keep the boys all out of the tent, and my tent-mates to go and be vaccinated. I was much surprised at the announcement, as I was not conscious of ever being exposed, and even yet a little incredulous, but if this is smallpox I can stand it. While I have been sick, our nice lot of horses have been turned over, also all of the harness, and it is said we are to draw muskets soon to do guard duty in town.
15th. Cleaned up and rested. Prospect of going home on recruiting service.
