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

Camp of the Penn. Mudturtles,

Hall’s Hill, Va., Feb. 27, 1862.

Dear Cousin L. :—

Your letter came last night and with it rain and marching orders. I had just read it and the rain had just commenced drumming on our cotton houses, when a drum of another sort called the orderlies to headquarters and they soon returned with orders to pack up every thing and be ready to march at a moment’s notice. This was welcome news, though the style the weather put on was not so welcome. We packed up everything and lay down on the bare poles to wait the moment’s notice. The rain continued through the night and we were not called out. This morning two days’ rations were issued and the orders repeated to be ready to move at any moment. I improve the time while we are waiting to answer your letter. You will excuse my writing with a pencil, as my portfolio and writing materials with your letter are in my knapsack under a pile that I dare not undertake to repack at a “moment’s notice.” I stepped out into the street this morning and one of the boys who stood there said to me: “Norton, there’s something on my back; brush it off.” I looked, and what do you think it was? “Couldn’t imagine.” He had his knapsack packed and on the outside two woolen blankets, one rubber ditto, one picket tent, pole and ropes, overcoat, pair of boots, haversack with two days’ provisions (Hardees and tiger), canteen with two quarts of coffee, cartridge box with forty rounds and a thirteen-pound rifle. I can only say I didn’t attempt to brush it off, but went back to my tent and found the same thing ready for my back with a bugle for a balance weight. All the regiments in the vicinity have the same orders, and last night the cook-fires on all the hills in sight were spluttering in the rain all night, cooking the rations.

There are many speculations as to where we are going. Some say a general advance is to be made on Centreville and Manassas, some that nothing more is contemplated than moving the camps a few miles further to better situations, others that the division is to go via Washington and Baltimore to Harper’s Ferry. My own opinion is different from all these. I think we are going to—stay here. Cotton has abdicated, corn never was much of an absolute monarch, but “King Mud” is king yet. We have had two days this week of drying weather. One, Monday, I think, we had a gale, a very severe one, that dried up the mud considerably. It was the strongest wind we’ve had in Virginia since I’ve been here. It blew down a great many tents in all the regiments. Ours are so large and well staked down that only six or eight blew down, but in the Michigan and the Ellsworth regiments some companies had not a tent left standing. I was over in the Forty-fourth New York when the gale commenced and tents began to fly about. I saw one whisked off the foundation and blown into the next street, carrying with it three guns, coats, caps, bottles, etc., and as it struck a watch bounded out and dropped in the mud. The jewelry had a perilous voyage, but wasn’t injured. In another tent the boys had dug a basement and fixed it up very nicely. They were busy at a game of cards when the wind unroofed their cave. Nothing disconcerted, they kept on, saying, “Let her go, we won’t stop for a little wind—it’s nothing to the lakes.”

I see L. must have told you of her expected marriage. I can tell you but little of her intended. He is a farmer, and, from what I have seen of him, I think him a fine young man and I think you would like him, at least in one respect, he don’t use tobacco. He tried a cigar with me once, smoked an inch of it, and, wise young man, his sensations requested a discontinuance of the operation. I’m sorry you feel so bad about my smoking. I think, after you had spent a night or two on picket and saw the comfort the soldiers draw from a pipe or cigar as they sit round the fire, you would say, “I forgive you—smoke, at least while you are in the army.”

I received the Atlantics you sent. I was very much interested in reading them. I like the character of that magazine better than any other I am acquainted with. My friends in the tent unite with me in thanking you, for everything of the kind has to go the rounds, you know. There hasn’t been an hour in the day since they came but some one has been reading them.

You inquire what delicacies I am most in need of and speak of sending me a box. I hardly know what to say. I have become so used to a soldier’s fare that I do not need any delicacies. We have a nuisance in every regiment called a sutler, who generally has a supply of knick-knacks ready for us for a consideration, and when we tire of hog, hominy and hardees, we get a little something of him to make our rations relish. A good many of our boys have received boxes from home, but they generally came from farmers and contained butter, cheese, dried fruits, pickles, etc., that cost them little and were very welcome in camp. In New York every such thing must be bought and at high prices, too. I have done very well so far without them, and I should not like to have you go to much trouble or expense on my account. If you do have a few things that you want to send, I suppose if sent by express to the same address as my letters, they would come to me all right, as boxes are brought up almost every day by our teams from that office.

2 P. M.—We haven’t marched yet, and are still expecting orders at a “moment’s notice.”

If there are any questions I have not answered please excuse me, as I have your letter packed up.

 Camp Porter, Virginia,
Tuesday, Feb. 11, 1862.

Dear Cousin L.:—

“Norton, ‘Putty’ has brought you a valentine this time, I’ll warrant,” said one of my messmates, as I entered the tent last night and flung down my axe (I had been out on fatigue duty all day, making a government road to Washington, for the old roads are impassable on account of the mud). “Well, let me look at it,” said I. and he handed me your letter of the 7th. It was not a valentine, but it pleased me much more than one of those sentimental things would have done.

I presume I do have considerable more time for writing than you do, but your remark about your household cares, etc., made me think of what Mother often says: if she had only one or two children to care for she might have a little time to herself. I see that any one who has a family to care for has enough to do to be constantly busy. From morning till night there is always something to do. I have commenced writing, but that ever recurring question comes again, “What shall I write”? It seems to the soldier when he takes up the pen as though there was nothing to write unless he has something to tell of gallant exploits in his own occupation, a brilliant victory over superior numbers of the enemy, in which he was one of the heroes. With something like that for a text he can write. Pages of foolscap are far too small to contain all he has to relate to his friends then, but, ah me, I’ve no such resource. A man is not a hero till he is shot at and missed. He who is shot at and killed is covered with the sod and forgotten by all but the narrow circle of his immediate friends. His name is once seen in the list of killed at the great victory, but lightly passed over, while the readers turn to honor the heroes who participated in the victory but were shot at and missed.

You want to know something of our “arrangements, beds, meals, etc.” I might describe the interior of our tent in my poor way, and that will serve as a specimen of the whole, though each mess arranges its own tent in any way to suit the members. We have the large round tent, about eighteen feet across the bottom and tapering to a point at the top. A round pole in the center supports it, and, on this pole, two tables are suspended by ropes, one above the other, and so arranged that we can lower them to use as tables or raise them up above our heads. As to beds, we have every style and form that never were seen in a cabinet shop. We used to sleep on the ground or on pine boughs when we had the small or wedge tents, but when we obtained these we concluded to be a little more extravagant. Lumber in Virginia is out of the question. A very patriotic Union man about two miles from here refused to sell me a couple of fence boards six inches wide for $1.50, so I made up my mind to be my own saw-mill. At the time we encamped here, there were hundreds of acres of worn-out tobacco lands grown up with small pines in the neighborhood. They grow very close together, slim and straight. “Necessity is the mother of invention,” says the old adage, and so it proved with us. We cut down any number of the poles, peeled the bark, got a few pounds of nails at the sutler’s and made our bedsteads, or bunks, we call them. They are like berths in a steamer, one above another, room for two above and two below, and for another back under the side of the tent. This, for one side of the tent, accommodates six men ; another like it on the other side, six more. For the “mattress.” or “downy bed,” we hewed the poles flat and rather thin so they spring some and laid them side by side as close as possible. At night we spread our overcoats on the poles, take our knapsacks for pillows, and, covering ourselves with our blankets we enjoy such sleep as many a one who rests in the most luxurious bed might envy. Our robe de nuit is very simple, merely our every day dress, minus cap and boots. My rifle and cartridge box hang by my side, my cap lies on my knapsack, and my boots stand on the ground within my reach every time I sleep, so that, if the long roll beats, I can be with the company in line of battle in two minutes. We retire early, not so much from choice as necessity. At 9 o’clock the “taps” are beaten and all lights must be extinguished. It is rather uninteresting sitting in the dark, so that hour generally finds us “coiled up,” as the boys express it. At daylight the “reveille” is sounded, the men turn out and the roll is called. Soon after breakfast is ready, consisting of bread, meat (pork, bacon or beef) and coffee. We now have our soft bread baked in the regiment, but we have eaten a great many of the crackers, or pilot bread, as it is called. Some of this was good, but the greater part very poor, moldy, wormy, and made of poor flour, etc. Several barrels had crackers stamped “T. Weld & Co., Boston, 1810”; Company I say they had a barrel marked “B. C. 97.” I don’t know whether the crackers or the barrel was made before Christ, but I think it must have been the barrel. We finally concluded that fresh bread, although lacking so many romantic associations, would be more nutritious, so we brought in a fine lot of brick that a secesh had provided to build for himself a fine house, made some splendid ovens, and now we have good bread. We have a little sheet-iron stove in our tent that does very well when it is not too cold, and we can cook a good many little extras, stew dried fruit, etc., and we manage to live quite comfortably. The paper you sent I have not received. It will probably arrive to-night. We have a great many papers. The Washington papers are here before breakfast every morning, the New York papers, “Erald,” Tribune and Times, the day after they are published ; Baltimore and Philadelphia papers the same day, and then we have Frank Leslie’s, Harper’s Weekly, Illustrated News and Forney’s War Press. Friends at home send us the Independent and the Evangelist, the Advocate, the Guardian, etc., so that generally we are well supplied, but we devour papers with a rapidity that would astonish them that have less leisure time.

Last night a man died at the hospital. I can hear the band as they are paying their last respects to his remains. We have lost but one from our company. Poor Pickard died at the hospital in the latter part of January, I have sometimes thought that I could die on the battlefield and be content, but to die in a military hospital, away from my dearest friends, with only the rough hand of a fellow soldier to close my eyes to their last sleep, would be hard to bear. It was a gloomy day when we buried Pickard. Great piles of black clouds came rolling up from the west, and now and then a flake of snow came sailing down, mingling with the dead leaves as they went whirling over the frozen ground till they dropped together into some hollow to lie and be forgotten. I was one of the eight selected as the escort for the body, and I was much impressed with the solemnity and beauty of the military burial. The procession was formed at the hospital, the escort first with arms reversed, the pallbearers with the body, the chaplain, the band, and the company and friends of the dead. The band played a beautiful but mournful dirge, and we moved slowly to the grave. We buried him under a large oak tree on an eminence overlooking a wide prospect of this once beautiful country. Arrived at the grave, the coffin was set down and the chaplain read the beautiful burial service and the body was lowered to its last rest. We fired three volleys over the grave, the drums meanwhile beating a low muffled roll, and then we turned back to camp. Thus rests on the soil of the “Old Dominion” a humble, honest man and a good soldier. Half a dozen miles off sleep the ashes of the “Father of his Country.” The world admires and honors him, and weeps over his grave, and yet, who can say that Adam Pickard, in his humble sphere, did not his duty to his country as well as the immortal Washington? He left his wife and little children when his country needed him, and now his wife is left a widow and his children fatherless. It was a stern fate, but he looked it sternly in the face and died like a true soldier, leaving his family to God and giving his life to his country.

Camp of the 83rd P. V.,

Hall’s Hill, Va., Feb. 3. 1862.

Dear Friend P—s.:—

It is just such a morning as would make a misanthrope happy. Byron’s bitterest and most sarcastic strains were, I believe, written in just such weather. It snowed last night and rains this morning and now two or three inches of slush cover unfathomable mud. Great black clouds roll up heavily from the west and slowly drizzle down discomfort in the camps. The evergreens that made our camp look so bright and homelike about the holidays are giving way under the abuse heaped upon them and now they stand leaning at every angle but that of 90 degrees, covered with ice and weeping great pearly tears of grief at their cruel treatment. The smoke curls slowly from the myriad pipes of the camp and makes a desperate effort to rise above the tents, then sinks despairingly to the ground. The cooks stir up their sputtering fires in vain efforts to make their kettles boil, and, as the rain drips off their ponchos, they look as if they would cook one more meal and die. I have been lounging on my bunk since breakfast, drawing the Spanish out of my cigar and working off the fatigue of yesterday’s guard duty, and now I have taken up my pen to answer your letter of the 24th of January. What I shall write, I can’t tell. There is no news beyond what you have in the papers. “All is quiet along the Potomac.” Our marching orders are “played out.” The boys are getting so that they won’t believe anything now. They sit around the fire and while away these dull days the best they can. How time does pass away, though! Here it is the 3rd of February. Seems to me I never knew a winter to pass so quickly.

Hall’s Hill, Va., Jan. 29, 1862.

Dear Sister L.:—

I suppose I might relieve your fears about my being killed or wounded at that great battle when I tell you that we are still here and likely to stay till spring. It is true we had marching orders, or orders to be ready to march at any time, but I do not now believe it was ever intended we should go. This large army is lying here, and, if there were nothing to keep up the excitement, they would soon become demoralized and care nothing for drill or discipline, expecting that they would have no use for it. So every little while they get up some marching orders or something of the kind to keep the men on the qui vive, always expecting some great thing that never comes. It is just so when we go on picket. The first time I was out, the officer told us that two men had deserted from a regiment down near Alexandria and they would probably try to cross the picket lines and get over to the rebels, and they wanted us to be very vigilant and arrest them if they came near us. Now I cannot certainly say that no such men deserted, but I will say that I believe it was just a story trumped up to make us watchful. Another time they told us that a large force of rebels had been seen near the lines and they expected an attack in the night. It seems to be a part of the tactics to use such means to keep up the spirits of the men, constantly holding out hopes that never are to be realized. I have got so casehardened by such treatment that I will not believe anything until I see it with my own eyes. I did think when we had our marching orders about New Year’s that something was to be done. Officers packed up their extra baggage and sent it off and everybody seemed in a bustle of preparation to leave. Well, they have kept it up about a month and nothing done yet, so I begin to believe that this is another sell. They found it would not work to humbug the men alone, so, as a last resort, they have to bring in the officers. They can make that work two or three months, but I believe that will “play out” in time. I know it has with me now. I suppose the battle you refer to was that of Somerset, in Kentucky, but that is a long way from here. That battle was a hard blow to secession, and I hope it will be followed by others.

Camp Porter, Va., Jan. 28, 1862.

Dear Cousin L.:—

I returned from the picket lines yesterday and found your pleasant letter of the 24th awaiting me. If you were in Camp Porter about 5 p. m. when that plastic individual that the boys call “Putty” arrives with the daily mail, and could see the interest with which his proceedings are watched as he distributes the spoils, your fears of burdening me with an extensive correspondence would soon vanish. I never thought so much of letters as I have since I have been here. The monotony of camp life would be almost intolerable were it not for these friendly letters. We do not expect much news, but they are like the delightful small-talk that does so much to make time pass agreeably in society. The worst feature of camp life is its influence upon the mind and character. The physical discomfort, hard fare, etc., I can endure very well, but I sometimes shrink from the moral or immoral influences that cluster round the soldier. The severe physical exercise is so fatiguing that but little disposition is felt to exercise the mind in anything that is beneficial. Everything that requires close or long-continued thought is excluded from the common soldier’s tent and he usually settles down to the conviction that all he needs is enough to keep himself posted in the news of the day and a little light reading. Thus the stronger mental faculties are unused and of course they rust. Another evil is the absence of all female society. The roughest characters are always to be found in the army, and. the restraint of home and more refined friends removed, those who are better disposed are exposed to the influence of such characters without remedy. Our associations go far to mould our characters, and as a constant dropping wears away the stone, this influence must have its effect. The cultivation of the finer feelings of the heart is neglected and they too are not developed. The pure and elevating influence of music is lost. I am passionately fond of music (although a poor singer) and I miss this as much as any one thing. The music of the field is the fife and drum or the brass band, and the songs sung in camp are not at all remarkable for beauty or purity.

With all these drawbacks there are many pleasant times in the soldier’s life. One of these is when he is the recipient of letters like yours; they speak to him in louder tones than those of the press or pulpit and bid him resist these evil influences and keep himself pure; they atone in a measure for the absence of friends and remind us that they are watching to see if we do our duty, and feel interested in our welfare. You need never fear burdening me with letters.

I fear that, if all the guide you had was my most graphic description of myself, I might pass you in Broadway ten times a day without recognition. I might say, however, that I am of the “tall and slender” order. Five feet nine is about my height, and one hundred and thirty-five pounds my weight. I am set down in the army description book as having brown hair and blue eyes, and, I might add, of very ordinary appearance.

I see you are a thorough abolitionist. I am glad of it. I thought I hated slavery as much as possible before I came here, but here, where I can see some of its workings, I am more than ever convinced of the cruelty and inhumanity of the system. It has not one redeeming feature. I was on picket duty last Sunday and some seven of us went out a mile or so beyond the lines on a little scouting party. I stopped at a little cabin near the Leesburg turnpike to get some dinner. I found an intelligent and cleanly mulatto woman in the house, surrounded by quite a number of bright little children. She promised me the best she had, and while she was preparing some hoecake and bacon, I entered into conversation with her and she was quite communicative. She was a slave, she said, so was her husband and the children. Her master was in the rebel army and she was left in charge of her mistress, who lived in a respectable house across the way. Her husband had been taken about a month ago to work on the fortifications at Leesburg. He had, at first, refused to go with his master and was most brutally beaten. She showed me the post where he was tied up and told the story with an earnestness that nothing but actual experience can give. I talked long with her and told her I hoped this war would result in giving her and all of her class their freedom. “I hope so, Massa,” said she, “but I dunno, I dunno.” I had a little Sunday-school paper that I took out with me from camp. I read some of the stories to the children and gave them the paper. How their eyes sparkled as they saw the pictures! But the reading was Greek to them. The mother said: “I would study ten years if I could read like you, Massa; a black woman taught me some letters, but Massa Blaisdell took my spellin’ book away and whipped me and he said ‘larnin’ wasn’t for niggers.”” This is “the land of the free and the home of the brave.”

We are still at Hall’s Hill, and as far as I can see likely to stay here. No movement can be made while the roads are in such a state.

Hall’s Hill, Fairfax County, I’a.,

Friday eve., Jan. 17, 1862.

Dear Sister L.:—

“The long and weary months pass by” and still we camp in old Camp Porter, or, as it was called before our new tents were up, Camp Leslie.

For several days the weather has been so stormy that we have had but little drill. We have had some two inches of snow and then rain and sleet, making everything so slippery that it stopped all military operations.

You will ask what we have busied ourselves about. In the daytime we sit round the tents, reading, telling stories, grumbling about the rations, discussing the prospects of marching, cursing the English about the Mason and Slidell affair, expressing a willingness to devote our lives to humbling that proud nation, and talking of this, that and the other. Those whose tastes incline them that way are playing with the “spotted papers,” but you will be glad to know that not one game of cards has been played in our tent since I lived in it or in the old one, either, and more than that, I have not played a game since I’ve been in the U. S. service. I don’t know as I am principled against it so much, but I don’t know how to play and don’t care to learn. I spend much time in writing. The boys laugh at me for writing so many letters, but I think it is as good a way of spending time as many others.

I have thought I would send you a present. Nothing less than my French comb. It is a singular thing, according to our notions, but I have no doubt it is a good one. Its value is nothing, however, except that which attaches to it as a soldier’s comb and all the way from France. I don’t know but some young ladies might consider it an insult for a young man to send them a fine comb. You can feel just as you please about it.

The individual, if there be any one in the army more thought of than any other, the one so long waited for by the boys with emaciated portemonnaies, has arrived. We were called to sign the pay-roll about 4 p. m. yesterday, and by midnight seven companies were paid and the rest of us by 9 o’clock this morning. That is rather quick work I call it.

I little thought when I crossed the Long Bridge last September that I would be so long here with no chance of meeting the enemy. But so it is. It seems to us very slow business, this crushing out the rebellion. I do not know but our leaders know best, but it seems to us very dull business, waiting for the rebels to be conquered by kindness. Our President is altogether too tender-hearted, too much afraid of touching the rebels in their tender spot— their niggers. General Sherman, whom he has sent to South Carolina, is such another bugaboo. He has done nothing except to land there. If Jim Lane had been sent there with permission to whip them the best he could, he would have had South Carolina used up by this time, Charleston and Savannah in our possession and a good foothold for our forces. But no, it would not do to go to work so. This is not a war against slavery, but for the Union. We must preserve the Union, but not touch slavery. Away with such nonsense, I say, and the soldiers all say so. Give us a haul-in-sweep of their niggers, their houses, towns, and everything, only conquer them quickly.

Camp of the 83rd P. V.,

Hall’s Hill, Va., Jan. 14, 1862.

Dear Friend P—s.:—

You inquire about our probable stay here in this camp. I suppose you know just as much as I do about it or at least I know nothing and I don’t believe you know any less.

We have orders to be in readiness to march at an hour’s notice and have had this two weeks. Everything that we did not absolutely need on a march has been packed in our old knapsacks and sent to Georgetown. We are all ready and some think we will leave soon, but I am so skeptical that I don’t believe it. I do not know as I told you that we had got our new rifles. They are the Minie, the best gun made, and our boys are very much pleased with them. We are practicing at five hundred yards almost every day and make some good shooting.

The Westfield cavalry is still on the other side of the river. I think they have not got their horses yet. Conway Ayres (you saw him at Ashville) has been over to see me. He is the adjutant. I had not heard much about their health. Since we got into our French tents we have not had much sickness. There is little sleeping on the ground, as all or nearly all have bunks made of pine poles.

We have the most changeable weather I ever saw. On Sunday the air was warm as summer, and to-day we have two inches of snow.

How am I enjoying myself? Well, as philosophically as I can. We have rather dull times, but evenings we write letters or sing, and we have started a debating society with considerable interest.