August 9. Saturday. — Am planning an expedition to go to Salt Well and destroy it; also to catch old Crump if he is at home. Jacobs, Company G, a scout, went up yesterday to Crump’s Bottom. Reports favorably. All safe now. Curious, quiet fellow, Jacobs. He takes no grub, wears moccasins; passes himself for a guerrilla of the Rebels, eats blackberries when he can’t get food; slips stealthily through the woods, and finds out all that is going.
Old Andy Stairwalt, a fat, queer-looking old fifer with a thin voice, and afflicted with a palpitation of the heart (!) —a great old coward, otherwise a worthy man — was one of the first men who reached here from the ferry after the attack of Wednesday. He was impressed that the enemy were in great force. I asked him if they fired their cannon rapidly. “Oh, yes,” said he, “very rapidly; they fired twice before I left the camp”!
Sad news. The dispatch tells us that “General Bob McCook was murdered by guerrillas while riding in front of his brigade in Tennessee.” He always said he did not expect to survive the war. He was a brave man, honest, rough, “an uncut diamond.” A good friend of mine; we have slept together through several stormy nights. I messed with him in his quarters on Mount Sewell. Would that he could have died in battle! Gallant spirit, hail and farewell!
I send out today Company E, thirty-nine men, K, twenty-seven men, H, about thirty men, and a squad of men from A, I, and C of twenty-seven men, and about twenty-five cavalry to stop the salt well in Mercer, twenty miles above here. Total force about one hundred and fifty men. They go up to Crump’s Bottom, catch him if they can, take his canoe and the ferry-boat and destroy the Mercer salt well. This is the programme.
A charming affectionate letter from my dear wife. She speaks of her feelings on the night before the regiment left for the seat of war, a year ago the 24th of July.[1] Dear Lucy, God grant you as much happiness as you deserve and your cup will indeed be full! She speaks of the blue-eyed beautiful youngest. He is almost eight months old. A letter from mother Hayes, more cheerful than usual, religious and affectionate. She is past seventy, and fears she will not live to see the end of the war. I trust she will, and to welcome me home again as of old she used to from college.
[1] Mrs. Hayes had written from Chillicothe, August 2: “The 24th of July a year ago was a happy, and yet, oh, sad night, and yet the thought that I was with you to the last moment of that sad parting sends such a thrill of joy through my heart. I think of it so often. ‘Twas bitter to know that when morning dawned, instead of joy and happiness, ‘twould bring such heavy sorrow, such bitter tears. We stood and gazed after the cars holding all that was dearest to us, but I was a soldier’s wife, I must not cry yet. While standing there, an old woman spoke to Mother, asking who was gone; then she turned to me, ‘You had better take a good cry, my dear, ’twill lighten your heart.’ How freshly everything comes before me now!”
