Camp Leslie, near Falls Church,
Fairfax County, Va., Oct. 4th, 1861.
Dear Friends at Home:—
I last wrote from Camp Corcoran and once before from Camp Casey, and you see by date we have moved again. The Colonel here presented us to McClellan as a well drilled regiment and asked the privilege of taking a position in the advance, which, I suppose, is granted. You have read of the taking of Hall’s Hill, in the late papers. Our camp is right there on the scene of the skirmish. Falls Church lies at the foot of the hill, to the southwest. We came here Wednesday last from Fort Corcoran. Munson’s, of which we have all heard so much, is two miles to our left on the southeast. Mr. Reed is with his regiment on the same hill; the rebel pickets are about a mile from Falls Church, so you see we are not far from them.
My time is so limited that you must not wait for me to answer each letter individually, but I must write to all at once and hope each will write in return. I did not think you had forgotten me, but I have been five weeks from home and not a letter till to-day. I have been anxious to hear, full as much so as you, I presume. I hope you will write very often. The last letter I sent I did not pay the postage, because I could not. We can get no stamps here, and no one will take charge of postage not in stamps, so the letters have to be franked by the Major and sent on. I wish you could send a few stamps. My money is all gone, and although pay is due us now, I can’t tell when we will get it.
General McClellan and his staff, General McDowell, General Porter, Prince de Joinville, Due de Chartres and other notables visited us last night. They stayed only a short time. I heard McClellan remark as he rode up, “There, those boys haven’t got their pants yet. That’s a shame.”
H. and I were selected as two of twenty from the regiment to go forward and lay out this camp. Lieutenant Wilson commanded. We lost our way and went some two or three miles to the right and beyond our camps, finally coming out right. The timber here is mostly small, scrub oaks, etc. In the woods near us we found any quantity of grapes and chinquapins (a small nut in a burr like a chestnut and tasting much like it). Chestnuts are ripe and plenty.
We are in Secessia and the meanest part of it, too, and anything the boys can forage they consider as theirs. A field of potatoes, five acres, was emptied of its contents in short order. H. and I got enough for a mess, and some parsnips. You ought to see us clean out the fences. The rails answer first-rate to boil our rations, and they have to do it. The country between here and Washington is in a sorry condition, the fences all burnt up, the houses deserted, the crops annihilated, and everything showing the footprints of war.
Virginia has acted meaner than South Carolina even, and I go for teaching her a lesson that she will remember. It will take years to recover from this blow.
We are very severely drilled and are improving fast. We are ordered to shoot any one who does not halt on being three times ordered to do so. I was on last night, and in four hours I think I challenged over fifty men. Our officers take every way to prove and try us, to accustom us to tricks, I suppose.
You need not envy us much our vegetables. They seem to be a failure. Our cooks don’t know how to cook them and no one likes them. Persimmons are ripening now and they are delicious. . . .
Direct care Captain A., Colonel J. W. McLane’s Regiment, Camp Leslie, Washington, D. C. . . .
