Flat Top Mountain. — Rained most of the day. Want of
exercise these rainy days begets indigestion, indigestion begets headache, blue
devils, ill nature, sinister views, and general disgust. Brightened up a little
by news that General Pope has taken ten thousand men and fifteen thousand stand
of arms from Beauregard's retreating army. It looks as if Beauregard's army was
breaking up. Later. News of the taking of Memphis and Fort Pillow.
General Cox read me a letter from General Garfield in which
he speaks of the want of sympathy among army officers with the cause of the
war; that they say Seward, Chase, and Sumner are more to blame than Davis and
Toombs! General Sherman said he was “ashamed to acknowledge that he had a
brother (Senator John Sherman) who was one of these damned Black Republicans”!
These semi-traitors must be watched. — Let us be careful who
become army leaders in the reorganized army at the end of the Rebellion. The
man who thinks that the perpetuity of slavery is essential to the existence of
the Union, is unfit to be trusted. The deadliest enemy the Union has is slavery
— in fact, its only enemy.
SOURCE: Charles Richard Williams, editor, Diary and
Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes, Volume 2, p. 286
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