camp Hicks, Near Frederick, February 12, 1862.
Hadn't the little hills better begin to rejoice? Something
ought to clap its hands. What of Burnside? The luck has changed. Louis Napoleon
says he will give us only “wishes.”
Good ones or bad, I care not, so they are wishes merely. This
evening an order comes to us to furnish, from our regiment, part of a force to
man some gunboats on the Mississippi River. That looks like life in the West.
It is an outrage on our regiment, of course, but perhaps will help the cause.
We send thirty or forty men, — no officers, that is the order. But to go back
to Burnside and three thousand prisoners. There's progress for you! Yet, in the
midst of it all (shall I confess it?), I have not felt so blue for a month as I
do to-day. Exploit, achievement, victory, — but I not there. I may feel
and express foolishness, and I think I do; but I had rather lose my life
to-morrow in a victory than to save it for fifty years without one. This
inaction and stagnation, in the midst of all the animating news from every quarter,
is utterly maddening; and I must yell out my grief in the midst of this general
joy.
There, I have relieved myself a little, and perhaps I can
now write reasonably, and with a moderately Christian temper.
There is some authoritative statement as to the relative
merit, I believe, of him who ruleth his spirit and of him who taketh a city.
You see that I do neither. When I speak of myself as not there, I mean
the Massachusetts Second, in whose fortunes and hopes I merge my own.
I ought, perhaps, to burn this letter, but I’ll send it, I
believe. In an hour or two I shall be cheerful as ever, and continue the
service of standing and waiting with good heart, I hope.
SOURCE: Elizabeth Amelia Dwight, Editor, Life and
Letters of Wilder Dwight: Lieut.-Col. Second Mass. Inf. Vols., p. 196-7
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