Headquarters Army Of Potomac
November 13,
1863
Here we continue to dwell in our pine wood, in grave
content, consuming herds of cattle and car-loads of bread with much regularity.
Yesterday, who should turn up but John Minor Botts,1 the tough and
unterrified. The Rebs treated him pretty badly this time, because he invited
General Meade to dine; burnt his fences, shot his cattle and took all his corn
and provisions, and finally arrested him and took him as far as Culpeper, but
there concluded he was a hot potato and set him free. He was inclined to pitch
into us, for not following sharper after the Rebs on Sunday morning, that is,
the day after we forced the river. He said the first of their waggons did not
pass his house till two at night and the rear of the column not till ten next
morning; that the roads were choked with footmen, guns, cavalry and ambulances,
all hurrying for the Rapid Ann. In good sooth I suppose that a shade more
mercury in the feet of some of our officers might do no harm; but, on the other
hand, it is to be noticed that we had excellent reason to expect, and believe,
that they would not run, but only retire to the ridges near Brandy
Station and there offer battle. In this case, the premature hurrying forward of
a portion of the troops might well have ruined the day. All of which reminds me
of Colonel Locke's remark: “If we were omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent,
we might, with care, get a very pretty fight out of the Rebs!” As it was, what
we did do was done as scientifically as any army in the world could have done
it, and with a minimum loss of life. I do assure you that Rappahannock station
was a position where thousands of men might have been destroyed, with no gain
whatsoever, if managed by unskilful officers; and even Kelly's Ford was not
without serious difficulties. I don't recollect whether I told you that the
enemy had made preparations for nice winter quarters, and were hutting themselves
and had made some capital corduroy roads against the mud season. In one hut was
found a half-finished letter, from an officer to his wife, in which he said
that the Yanks had gone into winter quarters, and that they were doing the
same, so that he expected a nice quiet time for some months. Poor man! The
Yanks made themselves very comfortable that same evening in his new cabin. Our
future movements, or standing still, lie between the General and the weather.
Meantime we have to pause a little, for there isn't a thing to eat in this
broad land, and every pound of meat and quart of oats for tens of thousands of
men and animals must come by a broken railroad from Alexandria. . . . The Palatinate, during the wars of Louis
XIV, could scarcely have looked so desolate as this country. The houses that
have not been actually burnt usually look almost worse than those that have: so
dreary are they with their windows without sashes, and their open doors, and
their walls half stripped of boards. Hundreds of acres of stumps show where
once good timber stood, and the arable fields are covered with weeds and
blackberry vines, or with the desolate marks of old camps — the burnt spots,
where the fires were, the trenches cut round the tents, and the poles, and old
bones and tin pots that invariably lie about. . . .
As you walk about the country, you often see fragments of
shell scattered around; for all this country has been fought over, back and
forth, either in skirmishes or battles; and here and there, you come on a little
ridge of earth, marked by a bit of board, on which is scrawled the name of the
soldier, who lies where he fell, in this desert region. Our people are very
different from the Europeans in their care for the dead, and mark each grave
with its name; even in the heat of battle.
_______________
1 A Northern sympathizer, who had a plantation in
those parts.
SOURCE: George R. Agassiz, Editor, Meade’s
Headquarters, 1863-1865: Letters of Colonel Theodore Lyman from the Wilderness
to Appomattox, p. 46-8
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