Colonel Rutherford B. Hayes to Sardis Birchard, September 6, 1864

CAMP OF SHERIDAN'S ARMY NEAR BERRYVILLE, VIRGINIA, 

September 6, P. M., 1864. 

DEAR UNCLE: — Saturday evening (September 3) my brigade and two regiments of the other brigade of the Kanawha Division fought a very fierce battle with a division of South Carolina and Mississippi troops under Kershaw. We whipped them handsomely after the longest fight I was ever in. Took seventy-five officers and men prisoners and inflicted much severer loss than we suffered. Prisoners say it is the first time their division was ever flogged in fair fight. 

My color-bearer was killed and some of the best officers killed or wounded. We have fought nine times since we entered this valley and have been under fire, when men of my command were killed and wounded, probably thirty or forty times since the campaign opened. I doubt if a brigade in Sherman's army has fought more. None has marched half as much. I started with twenty-four hundred men. I now have less than twelve hundred, and almost none of the loss is stragglers. 

I hope they will now get Sherman's army to Richmond. It will be taken if they do it promptly, otherwise I fear not for some time. 

McClellan would get a handsome soldiers' vote if on a decent platform; as it is, he will get more than any other Democrat could get. 

I am glad that you feel as you do about my safety. It is the best philosophy not to borrow trouble of the future. We are still confronted by the enemy. I can't help thinking that the fall of Atlanta will carry them back to Richmond. What a glorious career Sherman's army has had! That is the best army in the world. Lee's army is next. There is just as much difference between armies, divisions, brigades, etc., as between individuals. Crook, I think, has the best and the worst division in this army. Of the one you can always count upon it, that it will do all that can be expected, and of the other that it will behave badly. 

Sincerely, 

R. B. HAYES 

SOURCE: Charles Richard Williams, editor, Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes, Volume 2, p. 503-4