December 5, 1864
The weather
continues very fine and really warm of days, though the nights are provocative
of blankets — weather, law! that isn't very interesting, is it? My head has
indeed been singularly empty for letter-writing; when a man talks about weather
to his own wife he must be pretty hard up. I heard a characteristic anecdote of
Hancock which made me laugh, as I knew his ways. It appears that he had issued
stringent orders against plundering, despite which the troops had fallen on a
large flock of sheep and were making short work of them. Away went Hancock,
followed by the inevitable Morgan, Mitchell, and Parker. Very soon all these
three were sent spinning off at tangents, after distant delinquents, and the
General went frothing along alone. Presently he catches sight of four men
pursuing a poor sheep, bayonet in hand, and off he goes, full tilt, to arrest
them; but, before he can get in, poor ba-ba is down and still. “You blank blank
all-sortsof-bad-things,” roars Hancock, “how dare you? How dare you kill that
sheep?” “Please, General, we didn't kill it,” cried the terrified soldiers. “What!
Didn't kill it! You liars! You infernal, desperate liars! I saw you kill it,
with my own eyes; and there it lies dead!” — when — the sheep hopped up and
ran away.
SOURCE: George R. Agassiz, Editor, Meade’s
Headquarters, 1863-1865: Letters of Colonel Theodore Lyman from the Wilderness
to Appomattox, p. 288-9
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