It is now between
two and three months since our regiment went into camp. We have had nearly
three hundred cases of measles, with about as many of diarrhoea, dysentery and
fever. Not one quarter of the regiment but has been sick in some way, and yet
last night every man who left home with the regiment slept in camp-not one
death by sickness or accident, none left behind, not one lost by desertion! May
we not challenge the armies of the world for a parallel? We are sleeping on our
arms every night, in anticipation of an attack on Washington, and it seems to
be the general belief that we shall be attacked here. I am no military man, and
my opinion here is of no account to the world, but to me, for whose especial
benefit it is written, it is worth as much as would be the opinion of a
Napoleon. That opinion is, that we shall have no fight here—that the enemy is
out-generaling us by feints to induce us to concentrate our forces here, whilst
he makes a strike and overpowers us elsewhere.
SOURCE: Alfred L.
Castleman, The Army of the Potomac. Behind the Scenes. A Diary of
Unwritten History; From the Organization of the Army, by General George B.
McClellan, to the close of the Campaign in Virginia about the First Day
January, 1863, p. 19-20
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