Last night, about ten or eleven, five companies of Colonel
Moor's (Second German Regiment) Twenty-eighth Regiment arrived from Clarksburg
under Lieutenant-Colonel Becker. My partner, L. Markbreit, is sergeant-major.
This morning, raining hard. Exciting rumors and news. A Tennessee regiment and
force coming through the mountains east of Sutton — a battery of four guns, one
thirty-two-pounder!! What an anchor to drag through the hills! Absurd! Danger
of all provisions below here with vast stores being taken by the enemy. We are
ordered to cook three days’ rations and be ready to move at a moment's warning,
with forty rounds of ammunition. All trains on the route to Sutton are ordered
back or to take the way to Buchanan [Buckhannon] via Frenchtown. Eighty thousand
rations are ordered to same place from here. All is war. I pack my portmanteau
and prepare to move. Oh, for a horse which wouldn’t founder, or get lame, or
stumble! At night no order to move yet.
SOURCE: Charles Richard Williams, editor, Diary and
Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes, Volume 2, p. 71-2
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