Army letters of Oliver Willcox Norton (Eighty-third Pennsylvania Volunteers)

Stoneman Station, Va.,
Tuesday, Dec. 30, 1862.

Dear Brother and Sister:—

I have been hard up for stationery and stamps lately, more so than ever before. This month nearly gone makes six months for which we have not received a cent of pay, consequently there is very little money in camp. The sutler won’t come where there is no money, and of course we can’t buy anything. You don’t know anything about it at home. All you want is a little money, and paper, ink, pen and postage is forthcoming. But I couldn’t get it now if I had $26, unless the regiments had money, too, for there is none to buy—no sutlers. Postage stamps we have to send home for. Sutlers won’t sell them ; there’s no profit. I got half a quire of paper—this is the last sheet—out of a knapsack on the battlefield, and it has lasted me till now, and I just found a man who has a bottle of ink, so I’m all right for this letter, but the next, ah, me. the next!

I see plainly that I have not kept you posted in regard to my own affairs. I have taken it for granted that you understood more than you do, so I must answer some of your questions. I have acted as chief bugler since we left the Peninsula, but I did not stay at brigade headquarters till we left Antietam. My duties are to give the signals for morning and evening roll calls, guard mounting, drills, dress parade, etc. I have a programme furnished by the assistant adjutant general and keep my own time, so that I may say as long as I attend to my duties strictly I am my own master. For instance, the time arrives for “tattoo” in the evening. I take my bugle, sound the brigade call, “Dan, Dan, Dan, Butterfield, Butterfield, Dan, Dan, Dan, Butterfield, Butterfield.” and the tattoo. After I finish, the regimental buglers in each regiment sound their regimental call, and the tattoo. Whatever call is sounded from headquarters they repeat. When I first came the adjutant general used to tell me when to sound, but finding I attended to my business, he left it all to me, so I am giving good satisfaction and like my place well.

Ollie M. thought I was a sergeant, and congratulated me on my promotion. According to the regulations I should be, but I did not enlist as a musician and so I do not expect promotion as such. I should receive $20 per month, but doubt my getting over $13.

Three of us, two orderlies and myself, have put up a log building five logs high, and covered it with ponchos, got a fireplace and everything comfortable, and now we’ve got orders to march.

Falmouth, Va., Dec. 20, 1862.

Dear Sister L.:—

I have not heard from you since I wrote last, but you will want to hear from me now, so I will write a little if nothing more than to tell you of my safety. We have had a terrible fight, but you have heard of that, and I need not give particulars. I don’t feel like it, for it was nothing but humiliating defeat. I suppose the radicals have got enough of Burnside now and will want another change. I have nothing to say—of course it makes no difference to the country how many of her sons are offered on the altar of this incapacity. Oh, no. If it was Little Mac, thunders would be hurled against him, but no. We have got a man now who will move, no matter what reason he has for standing still. You may think I am talking bitterly. Well, I feel so. I’m sick of such useless slaughter. McClellan never made an attack and failed, and never showed stupidity as Burnside has.

But enough of that. You’ll want to know what “hairbreadth escapes” I had. I always expect you to want a string of them after every battle. I shall not gratify you this time. I think it humors a bad taste, but I’ll merely say I had enough of them, such as a rap on the head with a board thrown by an exploding shell, a mouthful of gravel raised by a ploughing grape shot, running the gauntlet of rebel sharpshooters in carrying a dispatch to General Griffin. I’ll tell you about them some time if I ever get home.

It would have done a person good, or at least given him an idea of war, to have walked through the town of Fredericksburg on Monday last. It was a place about the size of Erie, perhaps larger. On Thursday one hundred and fifty pieces of our artillery played on it, and after we had done all the damage we could the rebs played on it with their “brass bands” and “bass horns” from the other side. Between them both there was not much of it left untouched. It was battered and burnt, the streets were filled with a confusion of all things, splendid furniture and carpets, provisions, bottles, knapsacks, dead men and horses, blankets, muskets, the pomp of war and paraphernalia of peace mingled together. Men were ransacking every house, taking everything they wanted, and baking pancakes in the kitchens. Slapjacks were plenty while we stayed at Fredericksburg. I have heard from Alf. since the fight. He is safe and sound. My orderly sergeant was killed in the charge. That was all the loss in our company. Some few received slight wounds. Captain A. led his company like an officer.

Camp three miles north of Fredericksburg,
Saturday, Dec. 6, 1862.

Dear Sister L.:—

We have been here a couple of weeks now, and things begin to look some like winter quarters. The papers still keep up the hue and cry of “on to Richmond,” but we don’t go on to Richmond, and my “opg.” is we won’t this winter. The fact is, winter is upon us, and winter in Virginia, though very different from northern winters, is just as fatal to a campaign as frost is to cucumbers, or arsenic to rats. The moving of an army implies more than the marching of the men that compose it. Long trains of wagons, heavier wagons, too, than you ever saw, must accompany each division. Batteries of artillery, too, and when a few of these have passed along a road after one or two days’ rain or snow, the following teams are floundering belly deep in mud, and everything must stop. Now, notwithstanding what the papers say, I believe they know it is not the intention to advance on Richmond this winter. My own opinion is (you may have it for its worth) that we will stay here a month or so till the mud will prevent the rebs from moving north, and then if Congress has not done anything in the way of settling the matter, we will be sent south where winter will not hinder our fighting.

I have been much interested in the President’s message. I presume you have read it, at least that part relating to emancipation. It meets my views exactly. It is broad and deep, but yet so simple a child can understand it. Nothing he has ever said or done pleased me so much as his reasons for his policy, and his earnest appeal to Congress and the people to support it. “We say we are for the Union,” he says, “but while we say so the world does not forget we do know how to save the Union. . . . We shall nobly save or meanly lose the last best hope of earth.”

I do hope that Congress will heartily support his plan, and remembering that “the dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present” will “rise to the occasion.”

I think I wrote to you at Warrenton what I thought of McClellan’s removal, but if you did not receive my letter I will tell you in a few words. I think the whole army thinks as much of McClellan to-day as they ever did. We ask no better leader. I believe, too, that the President had as much confidence in his loyalty and ability the day he removed him as he ever had. “Why did he remove him then?” you will ask. On account of pressure of public opinion. There was a strong feeling among the people that he was not the right man, and they had lost confidence in him. They could not understand the difficulties of his position, and chafed at his delays. Time will show if they were right. The President saw that the people did not like him, would not enlist, would not come forward with their money, and thought best, though against his better judgment, to yield. Now, that is my opinion. It is not what the public press says, but merely what I think, and as I said before, you may have it for what it is worth. Burnside was a good man in his place, but not equal to “Little Mac.” His race is almost run.

I sympathize with you in your sorrow at the loss of one of your household band. Though I never knew her. I can almost read your hearts, as I fancy you gathering round the fireside or the table and missing her from the circle. The blow will be sudden and severe on Albert. I have often thought how I should feel if news should reach me of the death or dangerous illness of any of my dear friends while I was kept away from them. So far I have been spared the trial.

I am still established at brigade headquarters and very comfortably fixed, too. I am in a tent with two orderlies. We have built a log house just about seven by nine, five logs high, and covered it with ponchos. We have our bed in one end and a fireplace in the other, so we are quite comfortable. We need it, too, for yesterday it snowed and was bitter cold, and to-day it just thawed enough to be sloppy and nasty.

We have not been paid since we left the Peninsula, and money is scarce, I tell you. I don’t know but I shall have to stop writing for want of stamps. I must close this letter any way, for it is getting so dark I can’t see to write.

Sharpsburg, Md., October, 1862.

Dear Sister L.:—

I always liked Steve. We tented together ever since we left Erie, and he was sensible. He is a queer, eccentric genius like his relatives, but he did not stay long. He was just out of the hospital and he fell out on the march. I’ve heard nothing of him since, so I went on alone again.

At Hall’s Hill our Tommy came back. Tommy Hopkins is an Irishman. He is now nineteen years old. At sixteen he came over alone, and now he has not a relative this side of the ocean. He came into our company a total stranger. Now no man in the company has more friends than Tommy. There is something so manly about him that no one can help liking him. No one could be more obliging, and now no one could receive a favor more easily than little Tommy Hopkins. At Malvern Hill he was terribly wounded. Dauntlessly he faced the foes of his adopted country, but a stern trial was in store for him. While loading he was struck by a Minie ball which cut off the forefinger of his left hand, went through the ball of his thumb and out at his wrist then in at his breast, and only stopped when it struck his shoulder blade. He refused all assistance and went a mile to the hospital alone. His wound was dressed. Next day, in all the rain and mud, he walked to Harrison’s Landing, ten miles. A brave young heart is Tommy’s. With no kind friends to write and soothe his pain while in the hospital, he still kept his spirits, and finally ran away from the hospital and came to us. Of course I welcomed him back with his stump of a hand and the great red scar on his breast. There is no other man in the regiment I like as I do Tommy. But he couldn’t handle a gun, so the colonel took him to headquarters for an orderly.

Well, then I got in with T. H., a bilious, crotchety, quarrelsome old bach. He is terribly profane, boasts of being selfish and everything else that is disagreeable. I tented with him till we came here and then I changed. My chum now is a quiet, inoffensive, obliging fellow, a new recruit by the name of Palmer. He sings, reads and talks through his nose like a U. P. preacher, loves everything good and hates evil, especially tobacco, which I don’t, you know. I am very well contented, however, with him. I was with H. In fact, I am tolerably contented with everything. Dennison taught me to philosophize and take things easy.

Sharpsburg Ferry, Md.,
Monday, Sept. 29, 1862.

Dear Sister L.:—

Dennison T. has got home discharged. I wish I could have seen his mother’s greeting. I warrant you it was a joyful meeting. But Mrs. B. writes her sorrow. She cannot forget that though he went from home with a companion, he returned alone. Henry, I am afraid, will never return to receive such a greeting. They have never heard a word from him since the news of his arrival in Richmond severely wounded. I think he must be dead. Still they have no direct intelligence of his death, nothing but dreadful uncertainty.

If I should come home and call to see you I don’t believe you would be very sleepy for one hour or two, but I have no such expectations for the present at least. I have often told you that I was in for the war, and I never suffer myself to think for a moment of any going home till I go home honorably discharged, either unfit for service or at the close of the war. That day may be a good way off, but still I do not get homesick in the least. I know I never could feel easy to remain at home in full health while the war continued. No one would be more happy to see the war come to a close, the troubles settled, and the Union restored, than I, but few perhaps think less of military life than I, or would be more glad to leave it than I, if the cause were removed, but principle is at stake. I have cast my lot here from choice, and I’m not the one to back out because it’s hard.

I don’t just know about Almon’s garrison duty at Fortress Monroe. I rather guess they have garrison enough there. He may go to Yorktown or some of the other places in the vicinity, but I miss my guess if he stays long in the Fortress. I hope he will not be homesick, for of all the forlorn objects I ever saw a homesick soldier is the most pitiable. If he gets along the first month or so he will stand it afterwards.

So Uncle Joseph’s folks are down on McClellan, are they? Well, you know they are strong abolitionists and get most of their ideas on national affairs from Greeley and Beecher. Now McClellan is a more moderate man and deals with things as he finds them. He is no pro-slavery man, no more than Beecher, but I think he is a more practical man. He will do his duty just as well, now the “proclamation” is out, as he would before Greeley said the war would end in thirty days after the issue of the proclamation. It was done September 22d, so I suppose the war will end by October 22d, and some time in November I shall be home. Pleasant prospect, but I “don’t see it.” I approve of the proclamation, but I don’t think it is going to scare the South into submission. I think it will result in the total overthrow of slavery, but next winter will witness scenes so bloody that the horrors of the French Revolution will be peace in comparison to it. If the South will have it so, the blood be on her own head. Seward was right—the “irrepressible conflict” will continue till freedom or slavery rules the nation. I can’t see through the mist that clouds the future, but I’ll hope.

So you will allow me to laugh at you for thinking the smoke of battle reached old Chautauqua. Well, you are good humored about it to say the least, especially as you are not in a situation to help yourself very well. I do not say it didn’t come there, but did you see any repetition of the performance after the battle of Antietam on the 17th? There was more smoke there than I have seen at any other battle. It was a hundred miles or so nearer, too.

Camp near Sharpsburg, Md.,
Friday, September 26, 1862.

Dear Brother and Sister:—

Nothing of interest has occurred since I wrote. We are guarding this ford and “All is quiet along the Potomac” The impression prevails that the rebel army is not far off on the other side of the river, and some morning you may hear of another great battle.

I must answer some of your questions. On the march from the Rappahannock to Manassas, we were surrounded by the rebels most of the time. They got in Pope’s rear at Culpeper and then they kept there, going back between him and Washington as far as Centreville and Fairfax. They followed up in our rear and cut off our supply train, and were continually hovering round our left, waiting an opportunity to attack us. If a fire was kindled, the smoke in the day or the light at night would reveal our position and invite a shell, and we were not allowed to make any. Do you see? But I guess “nobody was hurt.”

You ask what good McClellan accomplished by his campaign on the Peninsula, and add that he has but few friends in your neighborhood. Now I might ask you, what has anyone done on our side towards crushing the rebellion? Is the end of the war apparently any nearer than it was last spring? Have not the rebels a larger army to-day than they had last spring? And are they any less determined to continue the war?

In its leading object, the capture of Richmond, the campaign was a failure. Such men as Greeley instantly pounce upon McClellan and blame him for the fact, when, in my humble judgment, the blame belongs on other shoulders. At Yorktown, he first met the enemy intrenched in one of the strongest positions in the country. When he arrived there, if he had had fresh men, artillery and ammunition, provisions, etc., he might have taken the works by assault, but he had not. His artillery and ammunition trains were stuck in the mud that was almost impassable, and by the time they could be got up, Yorktown was defended by twice our number of troops. Then Greeley and his party sneered because McClellan went to digging. He did dig, and compelled a superior force to evacuate their fortifications. Now, I say, he showed consummate skill in driving them from such a place with scarcely the loss of a single life. He followed the army to their new defenses on the Chickahominy. We all hoped he would take Richmond. We were disappointed, and Greeley sneered again. Of course he blamed McClellan, and thousands who swallow every word the Tribune utters as gospel truth believed him. Well, you ask, if he was not to blame, who was? I blame McDowell. I have hardly patience to call him a general. Great events sometimes spring from slight causes. If you have read the history of the war closely, you will remember the quarrel between McDowell and Sigel, when the latter asked permission to burn a certain bridge to cut off Jackson’s retreat up the Shenandoah, and the refusal of the former.

See the result—the bridge was left unburnt and Jackson crossed in safety and hurled his command of forty thousand on McClellan’s right wing. That sudden reinforcement of the enemy compelled McClellan to withdraw his right wing, leaving the White House unprotected, and consequently, to change his base of operations to the James. His success in doing this won for him the admiration of every military man in this country and Europe. Napoleon said that he who could whip the enemy while he himself retreated, was a better general than one who achieved a victory under the prestige of past success. McClellan retreated fifteen miles and fought the enemy every day for seven days, whipping superior forces every day, winding up with the victory at Malvern Hill. There we learned that he is a general. Those who have seen what he had to contend with have confidence in him, and although his campaign was a failure, we see that the blame rests not on him, but on those who failed him just on the eve of success. Had McDowell allowed Sigel to burn that bridge, Fremont could have come up with him, and uniting his forces with those of McDowell, Sigel and Banks, they could have annihilated Jackson’s army, or at least beaten it so it never could have troubled us, and then following up, united all their force with us and swept on into Richmond. When you wrote, you had not heard of McClellan’s victory at Antietam. If you had, I think you would not have asked the question. Public confidence, led by Greeley, and ever hasty to condemn, was severely shaken when he left the Peninsula. I think he has regained at least a part of it by that hard earned victory. If I were at home nothing would make me ready to fight sooner than to hear some home guard abuse McClellan. I am afraid I should lay myself liable to indictments for assault and battery pretty often, if public opinion is as you say. Don’t swallow every word old Greeley says as the pure truth. A man will do a great deal for party and call it country. McClellan is a Democrat, though not a politician. Fremont is a Republican. Now, see if Greeley don’t join in the popular outcry against McClellan and want Fremont to take his place. Compare what you know of the generalship of the two men, and ask yourself if Greeley’s spirit is party or country.

I got started so about McClellan that I almost forgot the one-fingered mittens and everything else in both letters. I will answer that by informing you that my whole wardrobe consists of what I wear at one time. I have not even one extra pair of socks or a shirt. When I get a chance to wash I hang my shirt up and go without till it gets dry. I should not wonder if another year’s soldiering would enable me to do without clothing altogether, and save my $42 for postage and tobacco money. I suppose Almon thinks his mittens and his oil-cloth fixings “big things,” but I wouldn’t give a snap of the finger for them now. They are very well in winter quarters, but I would not carry them ten miles on a march for them.

I suppose that two thousand soldiers looked as big to you as our regiment did to me when I first enlisted at Erie. I would not consider that much of a crowd now. I can see the camp of ten thousand from where I am writing. The greatest show of troops I have seen was at the review near Washington last fall. Old Abe and Little Mac had eighty thousand there on parade and that was a show. I have seen the most of McClellan’s, McDowell’s, Pope’s, Banks’, and Sigel’s armies, but I would rather see two or three pretty girls and a glee-book this afternoon than the whole of them. Write soon as you can.

Bivouac south of Sharpsburg, Va.,

Tuesday, September 23, 1862.

Dear Sister L.:—

I think I wrote to you last from Hall’s Hill. Our stay there was short. We spent several days in marching about between Hall’s Hill, Washington and Alexandria, and then crossed over into Maryland. There, that reminds me that I have dated my letter in Virginia, a habit I have fallen into from being so long in that accursed state, but this time my habit led me astray and I am still in Maryland, and so is Sharpsburg, or what is left of it. It is a village about the size of Panama, and in passing through I could scarcely see a house that was not riddled by musketry or pierced by cannon balls. That town has had a taste of war it will not soon forget.

We have had quite a march in Maryland from Washington up through Frederick City, across the two ranges of the Blue Ridge mountains and the Cumberland valley between, and then down on the west side of the mountains to the Potomac above Harper’s Ferry, where we are now. I shall always remember the march through Maryland as among the most pleasant of my experiences as a soldier. The roads were splendid and the country as beautiful a country as I ever saw. It has but little of the desolate appearance of the devastated Old Dominion, but everywhere landscapes of exquisite beauty meet the eye. Pretty villages are frequent, and pretty girls more so, and instead of gazing at passing soldiers with scorn and contempt, they were always ready with a pleasant word and a glass of water. I almost forgot the war and the fact that I was a soldier as I gained the summit of the first range of mountains, and the Cumberland valley was spread out before me. I was in love with the “Sunny South.” The brightest, warmest, richest landscape I ever saw lay sleeping in the mellow sunlight of a September afternoon. Oh, how I did enjoy the pure sparkling cold water gushing from the rocks after drinking so long from the swamps of the Chickahominy and puddles by the roadside in Virginia! I did think when I saw the luxury in which the aristocratic Ruffin lived, the beauty and elegance of his country villa, that a man might be happy there, but when I reflect that it is a palace in the desert and that but few can live as he did, I say, give me the humbler dwellings but better farms of Maryland, where one man does not own all that joins him, but his neighbors can live comfortably, too. It don’t take ten thousand acres here to support one family. Maryland will yet be free and then she will be a noble state. One thing I noticed so different from what we see in the north. There, in the vicinity of cities and large towns, the land is always more carefully tilled and more productive than it is farther from the markets. Here, just the opposite is the case. As we receded from Washington and approached the mountains, the country increased in richness and in beauty. Maybe you think I am getting too warm in my praises of a southern state. Perhaps I am, but it seemed such a relief to get into a civilized country after a year’s sojourn in the deserts of Virginia, among the few Arabs left of the original population, that I grew enthusiastic at once. But I have seen war in Maryland, too. I was a spectator, though not a participant, in the greatest battle ever fought on this continent—the battle of Antietam. I stood on a hill where a battery of twenty pounders was dealing death to the enemies of our country, and there, stretched out before me, was a rough, rolling valley sloping away to the Potomac. The mountains do not rise abruptly out of a level country, but for several miles on either side the ground gradually rises. The country is broken and hilly, affording strong positions for defense, and on the western slope of the mountains along the Antietam river, the battle was fought. Our division was held in reserve near the center of the line, and from where I stood I could trace our lines extending in a semi-circle for several miles. The valley was wrapped in smoke, but the white wreaths curling from the cannon’s mouth, the boom of the report and the scream of the shell showed the position of the batteries, and the sharp rattle of musketry deepening to a roar told where the most desperate fighting was going on.

I felt proud, exultant, that night when I knew the enemy had been driven from two to three miles at every point. Many, many were the homes made desolate that day, but it is not to us as though we had lost as many and yet gained nothing. The victory is ours, and the enemy took advantage of an armistice granted them to bury the dead and care for the wounded, to ingloriously retreat across the river.

Colonel (late Captain) H. L. Brown’s new Erie regiment arrived here lately and one of our boys who was over to see them told me that he saw a young man there who inquired for me and said he was my brother. Can it be possible that E. has enlisted? The last I heard from him was at Hall’s Hill. He wrote that he would take my advice and stay at home; he had given up the idea. I cannot understand why, if he has enlisted, he did not come and enlist with me.

I am waiting news from home with anxiety. I have had but few letters lately. Our mail comes very seldom. In fact, we are constantly on the move. I have not pitched a tent but once since I left Virginia, sleeping every night on the ground, rolled up in a blanket.

I hope you will write often whether you hear from me or not. I will write as often as I can.

Camp near Alexandria, Va.,
Monday, September 8, 1862.

Dear Sister L.:—.

For over three weeks we have been constantly on the move, not sleeping in the same place two nights in that time.

We marched down the Peninsula, camping at Chickahominy, twenty-seven miles; Williamsburg, sixteen miles; Yorktown, fifteen miles, and Fortress Monroe, twenty-eight miles; eighty-six miles in four days. Next day embarked at Newport News, and next day landed at Aquia Creek; thence sixteen miles by railroad to Fredericksburg, then following the north fork of the Rappahannock, we went out in the direction of Culpeper and after scouting round that country a few days, took the back track and followed alongside the railroad to Manassas Junction. We left the railroad there and marched back and forth near the old Bull Run battlefield, and on Saturday week we were engaged in the second Bull Run fight on the same ground as the other, a fight that throws the first one into the shade. If I had time and felt able, I would like to describe the battle to you and our retreat to Centreville. But I don’t know as you would like to hear such terrible details. Suffice it to say it was another of McDowell’s victories—a fearful scene of bloody carnage.

We stopped at Centreville one day and then made a long round-about march to Hall’s Hill, stopped there one day, and then a march of sixteen miles brought us here.

I would not, if I could, tell you how we have suffered on this march. Eating raw beef without salt, and drinking water from mud holes, were done more than once. I have marched forty-six miles on nothing but raw beef and ditch water, and yet I held out to the end. Now I am worn out, and can neither write nor do anything else till I am some rested.

I had to smile a little at your questions about the battle smoke. I think it more probable somebody was burning the brush in his pasture that week.

Harrison’s Landing, J antes River, Va.,
Thursday, August 14, 1862.

Dear Father:—

I received your letter of the 9th and Mother’s last night. It is gratifying to know that the 300,000 men first called for will probably be raised without a draft. I have thought for a long time that the cheapest way, in fact the only way, to end the war in a reasonable time is to raise such an overwhelming force that the rebels will be dismayed and feel that it is useless to continue the contest longer. It will save time, it will save lives, it will save money, to come down upon the rebels in our strength. I am glad that the government is acting at last on this principle, and I am in hopes that the effort will not be fruitless, as some have been.

We have heard of a desperate fight that occurred last Saturday between Pope and Stonewall Jackson. It does not seem to have been decisive in anything except bloodshed. Jackson evidently had a superior force, but a dispatch from Culpeper Court House on Sunday says that he sent in a flag of truce asking permission to bury his dead on the field of battle, so I think Pope is not badly beaten. Burnside is up that way with his forces, and my private opinion publicly expressed is that McClellan’s army is going there too. In my last letter I mentioned that we had “marching orders.” We have not gone yet, but troops have been going down the river as fast as they could for a week past. Artillery is being loaded up every night, commissary stores are going, and everything looks to me like preparations to abandon the Peninsula. The heavy guns mounted on the works lately thrown up in front, it is said, are being removed, and the rebel device of wooden ones substituted. The letter from the Herald’s correspondent in last night’s paper says: “If these ‘forbidden-to-previously-notice’ movements should not prove entirely successful, we may have something startling to send you, but if they do, the event will doubtless be highly satisfactory.” This is rather unintelligible language, but I think it means nothing more or less than this: If McClellan succeeds in evacuating this position without exciting the suspicion of the rebels, all will be well, but if they get wind of what he is doing too soon, they may attack him after part of his force is gone, and make a big thing of it. I confess I am a little fearful that this will be the result, but I have confidence yet in “Little Mac,” though it seems many have not.

I do not see how it is possible to move this army with all its stores and equipment and not have the rebels informed of it. They have their agents all along the river who watch everything that passes, and send instant information to Richmond. But I think “Little Mac” is enough for them. He commenced by sifting out every man not able for full duty and sending them away first. Then the knapsacks containing everything but a tent and blanket were sent off. The cartridges, all but forty rounds per man, were returned to the quartermaster, and the men were then lightened of everything that would impede a rapid march. If the rebels attack us, we can move as fast or faster than they can. We can follow down the Peninsula, if necessary, to Fortress Monroe, or when we get out of their reach, get aboard the boats at any convenient place. Our gunboats will protect the shipping, and render material aid to us in case of attack. Thus, I apprehend, ends the campaign on the Peninsula. By some it may be considered a failure, but whatever may be thought or said of McClellan by others, I still have confidence in him, and consider its failure attributable to causes for which he is not responsible. He may do better another time. I sincerely hope it may be so. If we can succeed in uniting our forces with Pope’s and Burnside’s and together fall on Jackson with overwhelming numbers, we may strike a blow that will tell, but I do not have any great hopes of achieving much in that way. Jackson is wary. He will get news of the movement, retire before superior numbers, fall back on Richmond and laugh in his sleeve, or perhaps more openly at his success in getting our army off the Peninsula by head work when he could not do it by force. Ah, well, time will tell.