pleasant Hill, September 10, 1861,
Camp near Darnestown.
I have had a day or two of horizontal contemplation,
enforced by my leg, but now I am well again, and about resuming “active
operations in the field.” You cannot expect that I should give you any stirring
news, and had I been on my legs it would only have been for purposes of drill
and discipline. After three days of scare, we subside. We keep two days’
rations cooked, ready for a march, and there comes to us every day fresh
evidence that the enemy are active. Their plan, of course, we do not know, and
I have wasted so many good hours in trying to guess that I now give it up. I
have had, for three or four days, a chance to read and study quietly, — a thing
which has not before occurred to me since I began this enterprise, in April
last. I have enjoyed and improved it, and mean to get time always for some of
it. Yet it is not easy, in the midst of all the active, practical duties of a
life, to secure chances for study and thought, and I have been glad of this. .
. . .
Colonel Andrews, who is in command, is full of life and
energy. The want of progress and growth in everything military is a sore trial
to him. He works hard for the regiment, and wishes every stroke to tell. I
think we do grow better, but when you understand fully what a regiment ought to
be, and ought to be capable of doing, you see that we are a long way off from
our goal. “Peas upon the trencher,” breakfast-call, has just beaten, and here
comes Colonel Andrews to go to breakfast.
SOURCE: Elizabeth Amelia Dwight, Editor, Life and
Letters of Wilder Dwight: Lieut.-Col. Second Mass. Inf. Vols., p. 98-9
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