We camped near Seneca Bridge, about twenty-five to thirty
miles from Washington. The order cutting down baggage trains leaves us eight
waggons; — one for headquarters, i. e. field and staff; one for hospital; two
for stores; four for company cooking utensils and the like. The band trouble
breaks out again. We enjoy these short marches among great bodies of moving
troops very much. Tonight the sutler sold brandy peaches making about ten or a
dozen of our men drunk. I thereupon made a guard-house of the sutler's tent and
kept all the drunken men in it all night! A sorry time for the sutler! Got
orders to move at the word any time after 10 o'clock. I simply did nothing!
Camp near Rich or Ridgefield [Ridgeville], about forty miles
from Baltimore, about thirty from Washington, about seventeen from Frederick.
Marched today from ten to fourteen miles. Occasionally showery — no heavy rain;
dust laid, air cooled. Marched past the Fifth, Seventh, Twenty-ninth, and
Sixty-sixth Ohio regiments. They have from eighty to two hundred men each —
sickness, wounds, prisoners, etc., etc., the rest. This looks more like closing
the war from sheer exhaustion than anything I have seen. Only four commissioned
officers in the Seventh. A lieutenant in command of one regiment; an adjutant
commands another! Saw General Crawford today, he was very cordial.
SOURCE: Charles Richard Williams, editor, Diary and
Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes, Volume 2, p. 349-50
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