Major Wilder Dwight: September 19, 1861

pleasant Hill, September 19, 1861.

There is no reason why I should write you a letter, except that Captain Abbott is going to Washington and can carry it. With such a motive, let me say, then, that all goes well with us. That the weather is certainly the most trying in the world, — hot, bright, damp-aired, blazing days. Cold, heavy, foggy, shivering nights. If we don't have chills and fever it will be because we take good care of ourselves, which we try to do. The regiment is all right, and improves. My court-martial drags along a lazy and feeble existence. It does severe military justice upon offenders, and one duty is as well as another, though now that I am on my legs again, I should like to resume regular regimental life once more.

Our officers, and indeed the regiment itself, are very impatient of the quietness of this life; but there is no other way. You would like to see the ovens that the men have built of mud and straw and stones, with the fires blazing from their wide mouths. You would like to see the rich brown coffee come out of my roaster. In short, you would like to see plenty reign as it now does, since the men have got nothing to think of but how to feed themselves. But if you thought again, how little we are doing to teach men to take care of themselves on the march and in active duty, you would see that we are still lame, and probably shall be for many months, until experience has rubbed its lessons into the memory and habits of both officers and men.

I do not know why I write this, except that such problems and results are constantly occupying my mind.

You see the exploit at Frederick did not amount to much. The government alarmed the Legislature by making arrests in Baltimore, and by sending up policemen, so that what promised to be quite a Cromwellian stroke was only the seizure of a few straggling legislators, who were frightened before they were hurt. Secessionism, however, is dead in Maryland.

–––– has returned, disappointed that he did not bag more game. I, who was going with him, as I mentioned in my last letter, on this secret expedition to Frederick, am consoled since the result was no larger.

SOURCE: Elizabeth Amelia Dwight, Editor, Life and Letters of Wilder Dwight: Lieut.-Col. Second Mass. Inf. Vols., p. 105-6