Headquarters, 23D Reg’t, O. V. Inf., U. S. A.,
August 17, 1861.
Dearest: —
Your letter to Dr. Joe did me much good. Bless the boys. I love to read your
talk about them.
I had just started this letter when a dispatch came from
Captain Zimmerman. He had a little brush with some guerrillas in the mountains
twenty-five miles from here and had three men wounded. This is the first blood
of our regiment shed in fight. He scattered the rascals without difficulty, making
some prisoners. We have had a picquet wounded on guard and accidental wounding
but no fighting blood-letting before. This is the expedition I expected to go
with when I wrote you last, but the accounts of the enemy not justifying the
sending of more than one company, I was not sent.
There is a general rising among the Rebels. They rob and
murder the Union men, and the latter come to us for help. We meet numbers of
most excellent people. We have out all the time from two to six parties of from
ten to seventy-five or one hundred men on scouting duty. There are some bloody
deeds done in these hills, and not all on one side. We are made happy today by
the arrival of Captain McMullen with an excellent company of artillery — four
mountain howitzers and complete equipments. They will be exceedingly useful.
Lieutenant-Colonel Matthews is nearly one hundred miles south of us with
Colonel Tyler and others. The road between here and there is so infested with “bushwhackers”
that we have no communication with him except by way of Gallipolis in Ohio. He
has been ordered to return here but deems it unsafe to attempt it.
Colonel Scammon has fallen in love with Joe. He says if his
qualities were known he would get a high place in the Regular Army medical
staff, and brags on him perpetually. We have very few of our own men sick, but
numbers in the hospital of other regiments.
My new horse doesn't turn out any tougher than the other.
But Captain McMullen says he has one which I am to try tonight. I shall get a “Webby”
that can stand hard work and poor fare one of these days.
How about the pants? If they are reasonably good blue, put a
light blue stripe down the outside seam and send them to me when you have a
chance. I don't care about the color. The blue stripe is enough uniform for
this latitude. Hard service for duds. I am well supplied — rather too much of
most things.
SOURCE: Charles Richard Williams, editor, Diary and
Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes, Volume 2, p. 70-1
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