A cloudy day — thawing and muddy. The colonel is planning an
expedition through Raleigh to Princeton to capture what is there of the enemy,
— viz. six hundred sick with a guard of about one hundred men, arms and stores,
with a possibility of getting Floyd who is said to be without guard at and to
burn the railroad bridges near Newbern. The plan is to mount one-half the force
on pack mules and ride and tie — to make a forced march so as to surprise the
enemy. He does not seem willing to look the difficulties in the face, and to
prepare to meet them. He calls it forty or fifty miles. It is sixty-seven and
one-half. He thinks men can move night and day, three of four miles an hour.
Night in those muddy roads will almost stop a column. With proper preparations,
the thing is perhaps practicable. Let me study to aid in arranging it, if it is
to be.
Dear wife! how is she? — Soon after breakfast the sun chased
the clouds away and we had a warm spring day. The bluebirds are coming back if
they ever left our twenty-first fine day this month.
SOURCE: Charles Richard Williams, editor, Diary and
Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes, Volume 2, p. 169
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