Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes

Camp Union, January 31, 1862. — Inspection day. Good weather until dark when a rain “set in.” Had a review and inspection. Satisfactory. Cannon firing with a new brass six-pounder, cast by Greenwood. First two shots four hundred and fifty yards, plumb in line, two and one-half feet below the centre of the target. At parade, had practice in musket firing — six rounds — eight hundred shots. Put one hundred and fifty-four balls in a board five feet high by twenty inches broad — one hundred yards. Very good. A jolly evening. Read the letters in the 27th and 28th Commercials to Avery, Bottsford, Captain Moore, Dr. Webb, etc.; then a talk and laugh at campaign jokes. Colonel Scammon returned from Raleigh; thinks the mud too deep for forward movements for a month or six weeks.

Fayetteville, Western Virginia, January 28, 1862.

Dear Brother William : — The excellent glass has reached me. It is all I could ask. I will settle with you when I see you. In the meantime, accept thanks.

I have applied for leave of absence during February, and if granted, shall leave for home the last of the week. We are a good deal in the field just now, and have made some good moves lately, considering the weakness of our forces, and that we have but forty cavalrymen. I see in the papers a good deal said about “too much cavalry accepted.” If we had only five hundred now, we could do more injury to the enemy than has yet been done by the Port Royal expedition. We are elated with the victory in Kentucky. I am especially pleased that McCook gets the plumes.

Sincerely,

R. B. Hayes.

W. A. Platt,

Columbus, Ohio.

[Fayetteville], January 28, 1862.
Tuesday A. M. — before breakfast.

Dear Lute : — I am getting impatient to be with you. I have sent for leave of absence during the month of February. I expect to get a favorable answer so as to leave here by the last of the week. If so, nothing but some inroad of the enemy south of us will delay my coming. They are threatening “Camp Hayes” — mustn’t let that be taken — and we sent Captain Sperry’s company and two of McMullen’s Battery there in the night, last night. I suspect that will settle the thing. I am delighted with the Kentucky victory, and particularly that my friend McCook and his regiment take the honors. We were good friends before the war, but much more intimately so since we came into service. Our regiments, too, fraternized more cordially with each other than with anybody else.

Do not give it up, if I should not come quite so soon as I wish. I am bent on coming as soon as possible — am getting ready. Sold my horse. Sorry to do it, but he was unsafe — would sometimes stumble. Will get another in Ohio. I do want to see you “s’much,” and I love you “s’much.” Good-bye. Affectionately,

R.

Mrs. Hayes.

Tuesday, January 28, 1862. — Dr. Jim left this morning for home, taking letters to Lute, Mother, Uncle, Platt, and others. Warm and bright all day, but oh, so muddy! Called on by two really good-looking ladies — Mrs. Thurman (husband Secesh soldier) and Miss Mary Mars.

General Rosecrans replies to my application for thirty days’ leave: “Ask Hayes if thirty days isn’t too long for these times?” I construe this as friendly, but the colonel thinks it is another instance of injustice to him. He thinks after he has recommended it, and in view of the fact that Colonel Ewing has over sixty days, Colonel Fyffe ditto, Lieutenant-Colonel Eckley about the same, Majors Ferguson and Degenfeld and Lieutenant-Colonel Jones, all of this brigade, and all our company officers, it looks unfair.

“Ah, but,” said I, “circumstances may have changed.” “Yes,” said he, “but I have judged of that in asking the leave, and he don’t take my judgment.”

Well, well, I have made up my mind to do my duty and do it cheerfully in this war, and if orders don’t suit me I shall obey them without demur.

Captain Gunckle, ordnance officer, Gauley, will furnish new bright muskets, shoulder-straps and plates, and ball and buck cartridge.

Monday, [January] 27, 1862. — Snow, sleet, finally rain. Rumors of “Secesh” cavalry and troops in various directions. Six hundred crossing Packs Ferry, threatening Raleigh. A like number of cavalry crossing to Princeton, ditto. Colonel Tompkins and a regiment above Camp Lookout, etc., etc. All probably with very slight foundation in fact. Two howitzers sent to Camp Hayes. Houses prepared to resist an attack by Major Comly. The major is plucky beyond question. All safe in that quarter.

Friday, [January] 24, 1862. — A cold morning, ground frozen; promises to be a fine day. Snowed all the afternoon. A busy day. Had a good confidential talk with Colonel Scammon. He gains by a close and intimate acquaintance.

Alfred Beckley, Jr., left with a pledge to return if he failed to get exchanged for young Henderson, Company H, Twenty-third, the captured scout.

Two women wanted me to compel a neighbor to pay for tobacco and hogs he had stolen from them. One had a husband in the Secesh army and the other in the Union army.

An old man who had been saved by our soldiers because he was a Mason, so he thought, wanted pay for rails, sheep, and hogs; another, for hogs; another would give security for his good behavior, having been discharged, on condition he would do so, from Columbus, Ohio.

Sixteen Rebels captured in Raleigh County by Captain Haven sent in. Thirteen of our men found thirteen of them in a house armed to the teeth. They surrendered without firing a shot!! A mail-carrier caught with letters of the 17th. Many from soldiers of the Twenty-second Virginia to their friends in Boone County.

Dr. Joe in a stew and much laughed at by Dr. Jim and myself because he left his trunk, etc., on the river in a big skiff in charge of a blacksmith he had never seen before.