Brigadier-General Rutherford B. Hayes to Lucy Webb Hayes, March 21, 1865

CAMP HASTINGS, March 21, 1865.

DEAREST: – You would have boiled over with enjoyment if you had been here today. General Crook came out to my quarters. Both bands were out and all the men. We had about forty rousing cheers, a speech from Chaplain Collier, a good talk from the general, a little one from me, and lots of fun. It is four weeks today since the capture.

We are having the finest possible time. The Twenty-third is not camped with me now. It is two and one-half miles off in the prettiest camp they ever had the other side of town. But the brigade is a unit now. The mountain scenery is glorious; the men happy and well behaved. Chaplain Little and his wife get up something good at the log chapel daily.

Affectoinately

R.

We have an old fellow, hard-looking and generally full of liquor, who brings in our wood and builds fires of the Thirteenth. He says, “I was glad to see old Uncle George."

MRS. HAYES.

SOURCE: Charles Richard Williams, editor, Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes, Volume 2, p. 568-9