camp Near Leetown,
Jefferson Co., Va., July 18,1863.
. . . I wrote a short note to Papa from near Funkstown on
the other side of the river on the 9th inst., though I have very great doubts
as to whether it ever reached you. The battery is in very bad condition as to
horses and is out of ammunition. Two of the guns got some of the latter before
we recrossed the river, leaving the other two without and I was left with them
and have consequently been in the rear ever since the cavalry fight near
Boonsboro', Md. on the 8th inst. All the guns are now in the same condition,
but the Ordnance officer of the Division, Capt. John Esten Cooke, perhaps
better known as Tristran Joyeuse, Gent., has sent to Staunton for ammunition
and as Lt. Johnston has gone to Richmond I shall be done for the present with “Company
Q.” I think that when we reached Westminster Md. on Genl. Stuart's expedition
round the Yanks, I was a little the richest specimen of a Confederate officer
that you, at all events, ever saw. My boots were utterly worn out. My
pantaloons were all one big hole as the Irishman would say: my coat was like a
beggar's — and my hat was actually falling to pieces, in addition to lacking
its crown, which loss, allowed my hair, not cut, since sometime before leaving
Culpeper, to protrude, and gave me a highly picturesque finish to my
appearance. I fortunately there got a pair of boots, a pair of pantaloons and a
hat which rendered my condition comparatively better. We left Union in Loudon
Co., Va., on that expedition on the morning of the 24th of June — and reached
the lines of our army at Gettysburg, Adams Co., Penn. late in the afternoon of
the 2nd of July. During that time the harness was off the horses only twice.
You should have seen the Dutch people in York Co. turning out with water
and milk and bread and butter and “apple butter” for the “ragged rebels.”
I was quite surprised at the tone of feeling in that part of
the State. In two or three instances I found people who seemed really glad to
see us and at scores of houses they had refreshments at the door for the
soldiers. The people generally seemed not to know exactly what to expect and I
don't think would have been at all astonished if every building had been set on
fire by us as we reached it, nor would a great many have been surprised if we
had concluded the business by massacring the women and children!
I stopped at a house in Petersburg, Adams Co., Penn. and
almost the first question addressed me by the daughter of the house, a girl of
eighteen or twenty and a perfect Yankee, was whether our men would molest the
women! I told her not, and she seemed to feel considerably reassured. It was
this same girl who told me in all seriousness that she had heard and believed
it, that the Southern women all wore revolvers. I suppose, of course, by
this time you have seen from the papers who has been killed, wounded and
captured and have very little doubt that you know more about these points than
I do, myself, for beyond hearing the report that Genl. Lee's Headquarters are at
Bunker Hill and that the Infantry are beyond Martinsburg and some little
inkling of the position of portions of the Cavalry Division I am in the same
condition as honest John Falstaff before he formed the acquaintance of Prince
Hal, and “know nothing.”
I received yesterday a double letter of the 23rd of June
from you and Mama, the first since I left Rector's X Roads on the 18th of that
month. Gen. Lee has issued an order curtailing all transportation except that
for the Corps and General Reserve Ordnance trains. This is evidently getting
ready for another move, but whether it is in order to cross the Potomac again
or to fall back behind the Rappahannock, or merely to be in readiness for any
movement of the enemy, is more than your correspondent is aware of.
SOURCE: Louise Wigfall Wright, A Southern Girl in
’61, p. 144-7
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