Headquarters First Brigade, First Division, Ninth A. C.
Before Petersburg, Va., July 27, 1864.
Yours of the 21st-24th reached me last evening. It is
pleasant to hear you talk, even at this distance, where the sound of artillery
and musketry is heard from the time you wake till you sleep again. A stranger,
if he should at this moment be put down at my Headquarters to make a little
friendly visit, would hardly be prepared to carry on a connected conversation
with these mortar shells bursting over and around him. At this very instant one
explodes, two — three — just over and in rear of these tents. It is wonderful
how we escape. The pieces go humming in all directions. My stockade stops all
bullets, so that while behind that I am safe from those. But these shells are
inconveniently searching, and dropped with a precision which would interest an
amateur (if he was iron-plated).
I don't know how long this thing is to continue. The Second
Corps crossed the James at Deep Bottom this A. M. at daylight, and has met with
some success, so a telegram from Headquarters tells us. Taken four guns, etc.
My brigade is under orders to move at a moment's notice, being in the reserve
line to-day. (We occupy the front line by brigades.) I shouldn't be very sorry
to leave this place. General Ledlie still commands the Division. He has not
been confirmed, but he ranks me by appointment. He is not much liked by the
officers of the Division, and it seems they hoped I was to succeed him, but I
think I had rather try a brigade before I venture any higher, although the
whole Division does not number so many as a full brigade of four regiments
should. I have six Massachusetts regiments and one Pennsylvania.
I am glad McLaughlin has the Fifty-seventh. If he fills it
up it will make a good regiment.
I am to have Charlie Amory, of Jamaica Plains, for A. A.
General, a very good one, I am told. Tom Stevenson had him appointed for him.
Frank Wells, of H. U. 1864,I have asked to have commissioned in the
Fifty-seventh to make an aide of. He is a gentleman, clever I believe, and has
seen a little service. There is quite a collection of alumni here. Mills,
Jarvis, Weld, 1860; Shurtleff, Lamb, of 1861. Mills is to be made Captain and
A. A. G., I hear. I wish we were together this warm day, and certainly don't
wish that you were here.
Paradoxical as it may seem, I have a floor to my tent
of “store boards,” and a bunk of the same, with hay in it. A meal at Corps
Headquarters keeps fresh in your memory the existence of ice, claret, etc. It
is like grizzly bear hunting. So long as you hunt the bear it is very pleasant
pastime; but if the bear takes it into his head to hunt you, it has its
drawbacks. I hope I shall pull through safely, Frank, and get to see you again;
but when or where, is beyond my ken.
I think physically I shall be able to endure it, although
this siege work, which won't admit of the use of a horse, but requires that you
should move very lively across certain localities marked “Dangerous,” is pretty
severe.
I have much that I must leave unsaid, but not the injunction
to write me a few lines when you can. With kind remembrances to all your
family,
I remain ever yours,
Frank.
SOURCE: Francis Winthrop Palfrey, Memoir of William
Francis Bartlett, p. 116-8
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