Camp Tompkins, October 19, 1861.
Dearest: — I got
your letter of last Sunday yesterday. You can't be happier in reading my
letters than I am m reading yours. Very glad our little Ruddy is no worse.
Don't worry about suffering soldiers, and don't be too ready
to give up President Lincoln. More men are sick in camps than at home. Sick
[men] are not comfortable anywhere, and less so in armies than in good homes.
Transportation fails, roads are bad, contractors are faithless, officials
negligent or fraudulent, but notwithstanding all this, I am satisfied that our
army is better fed, better clad, and better sheltered than any other army in
the world. And, moreover, where there is want, it is not due to the general
or state Government half as much as to officers and soldiers. The two regiments
I have happened to know most about and to care most about — McCook's Ninth and
our Twenty-third — have no cause of complaint. Their clothing is better than
when they left Ohio and better than most men wear at home. I am now dressed as
a private, and I am well dressed. I live habitually on soldiers' rations, and I
live well.
No, Lucy, the newspapers mislead you. It is the poor
families at home, not the soldiers, who can justly claim sympathy. I except of
course the regiments who have mad officers, but you can't help their case with
your spare blankets. Officers at home begging better be with their regiments
doing their appropriate duties. Government is sending enough if colonels, etc.,
would only do their part. McCook could feed, clothe, or blanket half a regiment
more any time, while alongside of him is a regiment, ragged, hungry, and
blanketless, full of correspondents writing home complaints about somebody. It
is here as elsewhere. The thrifty and energetic get along, and the lazy and
thoughtless send emissaries to the cities to beg. Don't be fooled with this
stuff.
I feel for the poor women and children in Cincinnati. The
men out here have sufferings, but no more than men of sense expected, and were
prepared for, and can bear.
I see Dr. S— wants blankets for the Eighth Regiment. Why
isn't he with it, attending to its sick? If its colonel and quartermaster do
their duties as he does his, five hundred miles off, they can't expect to get
blankets. I have seen the stores sent into this State, and the Government has
provided abundantly for all. It vexes me to see how good people are imposed on.
I have been through the camps of eight thousand men today, and I tell you they
are better fed and clothed than the people of half the wards in Cincinnati. We
have sickness which is bad enough, but it is due to causes inseparable from our
condition. Living in open air, exposed to changes of weather, will break down
one man in every four or five, even if he was “clad in purple and fine linen and
fared sumptuously every day.”
As for Washington, McClellan and so on, I believe they are
doing the thing well. I think it will come out right. Wars are not finished in
a day. Lincoln is, perhaps, not all that we could wish, but he is honest,
patriotic, cool-headed, and safe. I don't know any man that the Nation could
say is under all the circumstances to be preferred in his place.
As for the new governor, I like the change as much as you
do. He comes in a little over two months from now.
A big dish of politics. I feared you were among croakers and
grumblers, people who do more mischief than avowed enemies to the country.
It is lovely weather again. I hope this letter will find you
as well as it leaves me. Love and kisses for the dear ones.
Affectionately, ever,
R. B. Hayes.
Mrs. Hayes.
SOURCE: Charles Richard Williams, editor, Diary and
Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes, Volume 2, p. 119-20
No comments:
Post a Comment