CAMP OF SHERIDAN'S Army, September 1, 1864.
DEAREST: Enclosed find state receipt for seven hundred dollars payable at county treasury of Ross County. You can sign the receipt on the back and send it to the treasurer of Ross County by any friend. I suppose it will get around in about four weeks from this time.
The Rebs are reported all gone. With Sheridan's fine cavalry and General Crook's shrewdness they had no business so far from home. We were picking them up in detail. Their loss in the last two weeks was sixteen hundred — mostly prisoners; our loss not over four hundred.
Your two letters in which you speak of Ike Cook [a cousin of Mrs. Hayes] just reached me. I do not see how he can be commissioned as Mr. Hough proposes, but if he can get him commissioned and mustered in any regiment and get him leave to come here, I will get him a good place as aide (aide-de-camp) to myself or somebody else. Of course the regiments in the field need all their promotions. If he is drafted, Mr. Hough can arrange it probably so he can join the Twenty-third or Thirty-sixth. I will then make him an orderly which will give him a horse and very easy duty - nothing harder usually than the care of his horse. If he wishes to volunteer, or go as a substitute, he can get big bounties, and as long as I retain my present position he shall be mounted.
All well. Soldiers so jolly. Birch and Webb would like it here. The men are camped in a wooded ravine, officers' quarters on the edge of the wood looking out upon fine open fields and mountains. About a dozen men of Company B, Twenty-third, with their hats swinging ran yelling up to the open ground crying, “See the prisoners! Mosby a prisoner.” Of course those next to them ran, the thing took and the whole camp clear to army headquarters a mile off or more, perhaps ten thousand men, followed their example. Officers of course ran, major-generals and all. Then the “sell” was discovered, and such laughing and shouting I never heard before. –
A squirrel is started; up the trees go the soldiers and fun alive until he is caught. A mule or a dog gets into camp, and such a time! I am constantly saying, “How the boys would like this.”
Well, good-bye dearest. We feel that this Valley campaign has been a lucky one, though not very eventful. We shall, I think, go up the Valley again to Winchester and beyond. — Love to all.
Ever affectionately, your
R.
McKinley is a captain now on General Crook's staff.
SOURCE: Charles Richard Williams,
editor, Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes, Volume 2,
p. 501-2
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