pleasant Hill, Camp Near Darnestown,
October 9, 1861.
Dear Mother, —
I wish I could give you a vivid picture of our excursion the other day on the
board of survey. Lieutenant-Colonel Batchelder, of the Thirteenth Massachusetts,
and myself went off to Hyattstown to estimate damages done by the army there.
The Quartermaster Department gave us a light wagon. We put off our care as we
crossed the lines, and left the sentinels behind. We drove to Hyattstown
through a pleasant country. The heavy rain had swelled the runs or brooks which
cross the road, and in our passage over the last one we broke down. So we left
our wagon and took another. On our way back we met the —— regiment, Colonel ——.
The Colonel is a lawyer and member of Congress, not a soldier. We saw
the beauties of moralsuasive discipline. His men on the march during the storm
of the night previous had broken their lines. The roadside taverns had sold
them whiskey. The whole regiment was drunk. A perfect Pandemonium was the
scene they presented. We did what we could to help him, but when one soldier,
in quarrelsome or pleasant vein, shot another through the body, and a third
broke the head of a fourth with the butt of his musket, we thought discretion
the better part of valor, and did not wait to see what the fifth would do.
General Banks has ordered the regiment back, I believe, and is going to send
off another with more discipline and less whiskey. The regiment had been
detailed to go to Williamsport on special duty.
We drove on, and coming near the plantation of Mr. Desellum,
whom you recollect I have spoken of, we stopped to dinner. His sister, she who
sent me the big bouquet, was at home. She welcomed us cordially, and we were
surrounded speedily by a dozen little darkies all of a size. The maiden lady
showed us her flower-garden, and her family of negroes, and her
spinning-room, in which three spinning-wheels were busily twisting the yarn
which she was to weave into clothes for her negroes. She showed us also her old
family linen, woven by her mother; and, in fact, introduced us to all the
details of farm life. Then she took us into the best room, whose oak floor
shone with scrubbing, and whose bright wood-fire felt good. There we had a
dinner, and she talked patriotism; the Colonel and myself listening, and
concluding, as we drove away, that we had had an adventure, and found material
loyalty in Maryland.
A drive through the wood, across a swollen stream whose
bridge had gone, and whose depth made the crossing an experiment of very
doubtful success, brought us to camp just as the new moon and evening star had
come brightly out of the glow of twilight. There we found Colonel Andrews
returned from Washington, having declined the appointment of Adjutant-General,
to the great joy of all the regiment.
We are rigging up very clever fireplaces in our tents, and
preparing for winter; — learning how to be comfortable, which is, after all,
the great problem with which my mind engages itself in this military campaigning.
It is half the battle. I hope we shall have the other half soon.
SOURCE: Elizabeth Amelia Dwight, Editor, Life and
Letters of Wilder Dwight: Lieut.-Col. Second Mass. Inf. Vols., p.
113-4
