A fine, warm day. I rode with Avery and an escort of twelve
dragoons under Captain Harrison (a Union doctor of Monroe County), to look for
a new camping ground, ten or twelve miles from here, at or near Jumping Branch,
on the pike leading from Raleigh to Packs Ferry. The village last winter was
the rendezvous of the enemy who were threatening Raleigh and was burnt, except
two or three houses, by Major Comly to get rid of the nest. We dined with an
intelligent Union farmer, a Mr. Upton, whose house was spared. A good spring
for the men's use and a tolerable stream for the animals and washing. But no
camping ground which we would take in exchange for Flat Top as long as water
can be got here.
While at Mr. Upton's, we heard from an artilleryman that
after we left camp news was received at headquarters that McClellan had entered
Richmond yesterday! Prior advices led us strongly to hope, almost to believe,
it was true. We all said we believed it. How suddenly McClellan loomed up into
a great general — a future (not distant future) President! We thought of a
speedy end of the war and a return home; of the loved ones' happiness at home!
I could toast McClellan, “slow but sure,” “better late than never,” and the
like.
On reaching camp our hopes were cruelly dashed. The only
dispatches received, meagre, ambiguous, and obscure, indicate disaster rather
than victory! That after six days’ hard fighting McClellan has lost fifteen to
twenty thousand [men] and is twenty or thirty miles further distant from
Richmond than when the battle began! No disaster is told other than this; but
if it is true that he has been beaten back to a point thirty-five or forty
miles from Richmond, we are where I feared we were on the third. But these
dispatches are so deceptive as to complicated and extensive movements that I
must hear further before I give up to such gloomy anticipations. But I am
anxious!
SOURCE: Charles Richard Williams, editor, Diary and
Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes, Volume 2, p. 296-7
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