Major Wilder Dwight: December 15, 1861

camp Hicks, Near Frederick, December 15, 1861.

Another bright, sunny Sunday; the regiment growing in grace, favor, and winter quarters. The band has got its new instruments, and has been piping melodiously in the moonlight this evening. The instruments are very fine indeed. . . . .

To-morrow morning our brigade is to be reviewed by General –––. Napoleon, as the newspapers are fond of saying, used to precede his great battles and important movements by grand reviews. General ––– is not Napoleon. Voilà tout.

The Colonel, since we got into this new camp, has been doing a good deal of “rampaging,” and with excellent effect. I think I never saw the regiment in better condition. The relaxed discipline consequent on sickness and the march has recovered its tone completely. We have had a court-martial sitting for several days, and the men have been very generally and impartially punished in their pay. This is good economy for the government, and a sharp lesson for the men. Each of the divisional departments — the commissary, the quartermaster, the medical — are lame and impotent.

What do you say to the fact that, but for the activity and outside zeal of our quartermaster, we should be in rags?

The division takes no care of us; we go to head-quarters at Washington, and take care of ourselves. We go to Washington; but the theory and duty is, that everything comes to us through the division department here.

This has never been true, and, as I said, but for our irregular and enterprising expeditions to Washington, there is little we could get for ourselves. Again, what do you say to the fact that to-day, but for the activity of officers outside of the medical department, and but for their spending money saved from other sources, our hospital tent would be floorless, storeless, and flung to the breeze? Now, however, it has a nice floor, good bunks, and a warm, cheerful stove; and, yesterday morning, at inspection, looked as neat and comfortable as your parlor. No thanks, however, to the medical men. The division medical director don't know to-day that our typhoid-fever patients are not basking in precarious sunshine on the bosom — the cold, chaste bosom — of unnatural Mother Earth, after a sleepless night in the pale shadows of the moon!! To be sure, he guesses that the Second Massachusetts Regiment will take care of itself; but while they are issuing stoves, &c., at Washington, we are buying them for ourselves here.

Again, a brisk little stove is humming in almost every tent of the companies; many of the tents are floored: all this, however, with our own money, — individual, regimental enterprise, not divisional or departmental care. Such is the picture we present. Add to this that all this outlay and endeavor is adventured by us in the face of a blank uncertainty of the future, an utter darkness, an outer darkness, as to whether we are here for a day or for all time, and you have a position that would arouse complaint, if we allowed ourselves to grumble. We have no hint from head-quarters to guide us. We have been here nearly two weeks: perhaps we shall get advice when we have finished our action. Advice to act on is what we want. Head, control, direction, will, organization, is what we miss. I speak only of the sphere in which we move, of this department. It is a part of McClellan's army, however, and, as such, is entitled to better guidance. I do not put the fault on General Banks, but on the crippled condition in which his staff and departments are kept. Of this, however, I am not in a position to be an observer or a judge. I can speak only of the results which I see. There is no reason why I should harp on this theme, however. We get on finely, only I like to make it understood that we do so over obstacles. This is natural, I suppose.

When I hear, too, all this talk about a “grand army,” “the splendid spectacle our country presents,” &c., &c. “what a terror we should be to England,” “how ready we are for war,” I know that it is the nonsense of ignorance that men are talking. “Clear your mind of cant,” says Dr. Johnson.

SOURCE: Elizabeth Amelia Dwight, Editor, Life and Letters of Wilder Dwight: Lieut.-Col. Second Mass. Inf. Vols., p. 172-4