Lieutenant-Colonel Rutherford B. Hayes to Laura Platt, November 29, 1861

Fayetteville, Virginia, November 29, 1861.

Dear Laura: — Thanks for your letter. I hope I may think your health is improved, especially as you insist upon the pair of swollen cheeks. We are to stay here this winter. Our business for the next few weeks is building a couple of forts and getting housed fifteen hundred or two thousand men. We occupy a good brick house, papered and furnished, deserted by its secession proprietor on our approach. Our mess consists of Colonel Scammon, now commanding [the] Third Brigade, Colonel Ewing of [the] Thirtieth, Dr. Joe, and a half dozen other officers.

The village was a fine one — pretty gardens, fruit, flowers, and pleasant homes. All natives gone except three or four families of ladies — two very attractive young ladies among them, who are already turning the heads or exciting the gallantry of such “gay and festive” beaux as the doctor.

We are in no immediate danger here of anything except starvation, which you know is a slow death and gives ample time for reflection. All our supplies come from the head of navigation on the Kanawha over a road remarkable for the beauty and sublimity of its scenery, the depth of its mud, and the dizzy precipices which bound it on either side. On yesterday one of our bread waggons with driver and four horses missed the road four or six inches and landed ("landed" is not so descriptive of the fact as lit) in the top of a tree ninety feet high after a fall of about seventy feet. The miracle is that the driver is here to explained that one of his leaders hawed when he ought to have geed.

We are now encouraging trains of pack mules. They do well among the scenery, but unfortunately part of the route is a Serbonian Bog where armies whole might sink if they haven't, and the poor mules have a time of it. The distance luckily to navigable water is only sixteen to twenty miles. If, however, the water gets low, the distance will increase thirty to forty miles, and if it freezes — why, then we shall all be looking for the next thaw for victuals.

We are to have a telegraph line to the world done tomorrow, and a daily mail subject to the obstacles aforesaid, so we can send you dispatches showing exactly how our starvation progresses from day to day.

On the whole, I rather like the prospect. We are most comfortably housed, and shall no doubt have a pretty jolly winter. There will be a few weeks of busy work getting our forts ready, etc., etc. After that I can no doubt come home and visit you all for a brief season.

So the nice young lieutenant is a Washington. Alas! that so good a name should sink so low.

I am interrupted constantly. Good-bye. Love to all. Can't write often. Send this to Lucy.

Affectionately, your uncle,

Ruddy.

Miss Laura Platt.

SOURCE: Charles Richard Williams, editor, Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes, Volume 2, p. 152-3