muddy Branch Camp, Camp Near Seneca,
November 1, 1861.
You have your choice of dates, for I think our camp lies
between the two, and General Banks uses the former designation for the
division, while General Abercrombie uses the latter for his brigade. I hope
that we shall cease to have occasion to use either date before the traditional
Thanksgiving day overtakes us. Unless we do, it will find us in the wilderness,
and in fasting and humiliation. I look to see ripeness in these late autumn
days, and I hope that, without shaking the tree of Providence, some full-grown
events may gravitate rapidly to their ripe result, even in this ill-omened
month of November. Your letter of Monday takes too dark a view of events. I can
well understand that, at your distance, our hardships and trials look harder
than they seem to us. I do not, in the least, despair of happy results, and the
more I think of the Edward's Ferry, or loon-roads, or Conrad's Ferry
mishap (or, to describe it alliteratively, the blunder of Ball's Bluff), the
more clearly it seems to me to be an insignificant blunder on the out skirts of
the main enterprise, which, except for the unhappy loss of life, and except as
a test of military capacity, is now a part of the past, without any grave
consequences to follow. I was well aware that, in writing my first letter, I
should give you the vivid, and possibly the exaggerated impressions of the sudden
and immediate presence of the disaster. The wreck of a small yacht is quite as
serious to the crew as the foundering of the Great Eastern. But the
underwriters class the events very differently. And in our national account of
loss, Ball's Bluff will take a modest rank.
Should the naval expedition prove a success, and should the
Army of the Potomac strike its blow at the opportune moment, we can forget our
mishap. You see I am chasing again the butterflies of hope. Without them life
wouldn't be worth the living.
Tell father I have read the pleasant sketch of Soldiers
and their Science, which he sent me. I wish he would get me the book
itself, through Little and Brown, and also “Crawford's Standing Orders,” and
send them on by express. This coming winter has got to be used in some way, and
I expect to dedicate a great part of it to catching up with some of these West
Point officers in the commonplaces of military science.
We are quietly in camp again, and are arranging our
camping-ground with as much neatness and care as if it were to be permanent.
The ovens have been built, the ground cleared, the stumps uprooted, and now the
air is full of the noise of a large party of men who are clearing off the
rubbish out of the woods about our tents. By Sunday morning our camp will look
as clean and regular and military as if we had been here a month. Yesterday was
the grand inspection and muster for payment. I wish you could have seen the
regiment drawn up with its full equipment, — knapsacks, haversacks, and all. It
was a fine sight. By the way, why does not father snatch a day or two, and come
out to see us? We are only a pleasant morning's drive from Washington, and I
think he would enjoy seeing us as we are in our present case. D––– would enjoy
the trip, too, and they might also pay a visit to William down at Port Tobacco,
or wherever he may now be. I throw out this suggestion.
To-day I am brigade officer of the day, and I have been in
the saddle this morning three or four hours visiting the camps and the pickets
on the river. It has been a beautiful morning of the Indian summer, and I have
enjoyed it greatly. Colonel Andrews took cold and got over-fatigued during our
last week's work, and he is quite down with a feverish attack. Yesterday I
found a nice bed for him in a neighboring house, and this morning he is quite
comfortable. We miss him very much in camp, and I hope he'll be up in a day or
two
“Happy that nation whose annals are tiresome,” writes some
one. “Lucky that major whose letters are dull,” think you, I suppose. That good
fortune, if it be one, I now enjoy.
I have an opportunity to send this letter, and so off it
goes, with much love to all at home, in the hope that you will keep your
spirits up.
SOURCE: Elizabeth Amelia Dwight, Editor, Life and
Letters of Wilder Dwight: Lieut.-Col. Second Mass. Inf. Vols., p. 133-5
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