Buckeyestown, August 23, 1861, Friday, in Camp.
I began a letter before breakfast this morning, but my pen
dragged so that I tore it up. Now I have a short time, and perhaps not a long
story, but certainly a good breakfast to tell it on. And this same matter of a
good breakfast is not a small one. The foraging on a march is not easy.
Chickens and eggs and bread and butter and milk, &c, all have to be
extemporized by our darkies, as we go along. Sometimes we do well; sometimes,
badly. This morning, being bent on eggs, I sent my little English groom off on
horseback. He went to a farm-house, into a hen-yard, and waited for cackling.
Presently he returned, and said : “I've an egg for ye, sir. I waited till the
hen laid it, and then brought the hen and the egg.” That is close work, I
think.
I sent you a letter Wednesday morning. Immediately after
came marching orders. I hurried off on horseback to call in our scattered
forces. First, I went to Harper's Ferry, and found Colonel Andrews destroying
our friend Herr's mill. Herr was very sombre. His little boy, with whom I have
a friendship, rushed up to me, and said chokingly: “It is too bad to destroy
the mill; but it's the secessionists that's the cause of it, isn't it, Major?”
I told him, Yes. Andrews was breaking the buckets of the turbine wheel, and
smashing the gearing of the mill. He had Company A, from Lowell, who are the
mechanics of our regiment. He was sorry to be interrupted, but there was no
remedy, and so off he came.
Then I went back and off on to Battery Hill to get the
artillery off; then again to recall an outlying picket on top of the mountain;
then galloped back to camp to see about rations; then, at last, the regiment
got in marching array. The day was bright and cool, — the regiment moved off at
twelve o'clock. Hard bread in haversacks, and hoping for something better.
Money in pocket, and, 1 am sorry to say, an occasional excess of whiskey in a
guilty canteen. Pay-day has its evils, as I thought when directing two drunken
men to be tied and put in a wagon.
We made a brisk march of twelve miles to Jefferson. There we
spent the night. The next morning, after a tedious delay in a depressing rain
to get our wagons mended, we again moved on up, up, up a long hill in a close,
muggy dog-day. The men's knapsacks pulled on them, and when we came on to our
present camping-ground, at four o'clock, there was a long trail of lame ducks
behind. They soon came in, and now are looking forward to another tramp.
The panic-stricken women and children pursued us, as we came
away from Harper's Ferry, not daring to remain without our protection. The
Rebels are foraging all through the country there; but nothing more than that
appears to be done anywhere, though rumor is trumpet-tongued with reports of
armies large enough to conquer the hemisphere. Mark my prophecy. Beauregard
lacks transportation. He cannot move one hundred thousand men across the
Potomac. This has prevented and will prevent his active operations. But it is
not improbable that there will be skirmishes along the river.
SOURCE: Elizabeth Amelia Dwight, Editor, Life and
Letters of Wilder Dwight: Lieut.-Col. Second Mass. Inf. Vols., p. 81-2
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