Meadow Bluff, Greenbrier County, West Virginia,
May 19. l864.
Dear Uncle: —
We are safely within what we now call “our own lines” after twenty-one days of
marching, fighting, starving, etc., etc. For twelve days we have had nothing to
eat except what the country afforded. Our raid has been in all respects
successful. We destroyed the famous Dublin Bridge and eighteen miles of the
Virginia and Tennessee Railroad and many depots and stores; captured ten pieces
of artillery, three hundred prisoners, General Jenkins and other officers
among: them, and killed and wounded about five hundred, besides utterly routing
Jenkins' army in the bloody battle of Cloyd's Mountain. My brigade had two
regiments and part of a third in the battle. [The] Twenty-third lost one
hundred killed and wounded. We had a severe duty but did just as well as I
could have wished. We charged a Rebel battery entrenched in [on] a wooded hill
across an open level meadow three hundred yards wide and a deep ditch, wetting
me to the waist, and carried it without a particle of wavering or even check,
losing, however, many officers and men killed and wounded. It being the vital
point General Crook charged with us in person. One brigade from the Army of the
Potomac (Pennsylvania Reserves) broke and fled from the field. Altogether, this
is our finest experience in the war, and General Crook is the best general we
have ever served under, not excepting Rosecrans.
Many of the men are barefooted, and we shall probably remain
here some time to refit. We hauled in wagons to this point, over two hundred of
our wounded, crossing two large rivers by fording and ferrying and three ranges
of high mountains. The news from the outside world is meagre and from Rebel
sources. We almost believe that Grant must have been successful from the little
we gather.
Sincerely,
R. B. Hayes.
S. BlRCHARD.
SOURCE: Charles Richard Williams, editor, Diary and
Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes, Volume 2, p. 463-4
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