camp Near Harrisonburg, April 26, 1862, Saturday.
Rain! rain! rain! March! march! march! What a life! We
marched fifteen miles yesterday, in mud and rain, to this point, and got into
camp at night in reasonable comfort, but almost without rations, and now we are
busy with the miserable interrogatory of what to eat?
Such is our experience. Colonel Andrews is again on detached
duty, and, for the past few days, I have been in command. It is impossible to
exaggerate the difficulty of taking care of a regiment when the whole Quartermaster
and Commissary Departments of the army corps are in such hopeless confusion and
debility.
No other army corps has the obstacles to contend against of
this kind that we have. At Yorktown they have the sea, and the Western rivers
bear supplies as well as gunboats. Here our wagons cannot bring supplies enough
to last until they return from a second trip. We shall be driven to forage from
the country; and I do not see any system adopted wise enough and prompt enough
for that effort. But there is no use in croaking; we shall get out of the woods
somehow, I suppose.
Among other short supplies, we are wholly without newspapers
since a week ago. What is the news? I hope McClellan is silencing his opponents
by silencing the enemy's batteries. That's his best answer.
Well, the first year of my military service expires this
week. It has been a busy one. I am willing to enter on another, but I wish I
could see the beginning of the end more clearly than I can. We didn't think the
Southern Confederacy had a year's life in it a year ago. They have illustrated
the power of able and unscrupulous leaders, and we have furnished some hints,
at least, of the weakness of feeble and scrupulous leaders. I am in such a
trite and moralizing frame of mind that I will spare you any further prosing.
We may go on to Staunton, and we may cross the gap to
Gordonsville. We can't stay here much longer, and I hope my next letter may give
you some guess at our future.
SOURCE: Elizabeth Amelia Dwight, Editor, Life and
Letters of Wilder Dwight: Lieut.-Col. Second Mass. Inf. Vols., p. 240-1
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