pleasant Hill, September 12, 1861,
Thursday Morning.
Yes! There they go again! Home, sweet home! And then the
maddening suggestion of pleasures and palaces! If our band were malicious and
impish, could they insist upon a more discontenting theme? Yet, as sure as
there comes a chill, cloudy, morose morning, the band come out to guard-mounting,
and fill the air with sighings after home, &c. Now they change; it is Hail
Columbia, happy land! Is there not a bitterness of satire in that, even, which
alloys the patriotic associations of the melody? Columbia seems anything but a
happy land just now, in the midst of rebellion and treason. But the music
kindles one, after all. It is the morning that is out of tune, or myself,
perhaps. A raw and bitter night, — rainy and chill. The tents blowing down, the
rain blowing in, dripping visitors in india-rubber garments sitting down on
your bed, a spluttering candle flickering out, and leaving you hopelessly in
the dark, a new pool surprising your slipper, a sudden freshet carrying away
your dressing-case, the quick, sharp rattle and tattoo of the raindrops, and
the tent fluttering with every gusty squall, sleep precarious and uncertain. At
last reveillé, and
a hoarse, damp “Good morning” from the Doctor, who speculates grimly, in the
next tent, upon the folly of getting up. Yet we do get up, and after breakfast
I sit down to write to the tune of home. “Sich,” as the Doctor is fond of
saying, “is life; and, more particularly, camp life.” I happen to have a
delicious bit of romance for you to-day; and as the sun is getting warmer, and
the rain is drying up, I may get cheerful by telling it. The Chaplain appeared
yesterday with the confidential narrative that he had been performing an uncommon
ceremony. In a word, he had married a couple! “Who was the bridegroom?” asks
Colonel Andrews, who is still in command. “Sergeant .” It then appeared that the
bride came out from Massachusetts to be married, and it had all been “fixed,”
as they phrase it, in a house near the camp that morning, a few hours after her
arrival. The Sergeant was to remain true to his duty, and the new wife was to
return by the next day's stage. But the romance goes further. The true love had
met other ripples in its flow. Malice traduced the Sergeant last spring to his
enslaver. She gave him up, and “he went, and in despair enlisted for a soldier.”
The truth came at last to the maiden's mind, and her meditations were no longer
“fancy free.” She loved her lost Sergeant more than ever, and so out she came,
and said so plump and fairly, once for all, to the parson, and they were a
happy pair again. The Colonel expressed some doubt to the Chaplain, whether it
was precisely according to military discipline to get married in camp, but did
not take a rigid view of it. Soon after, the Sergeant appeared at the Colonel's
tent. “I should like a leave of absence for three hours, sir.” “What for,
Sergeant?” “To see a friend, sir.” “Can't your friend come here?” “No, sir, not
very well.” “Do you want to be away as long as that?” (severely). “Yes, sir, I
should like two or three hours” (timidly). “Sergeant,” said the
Colonel, with a twinkle — a benevolent twinkle —in his eye, “I think I know who
your friend is. Wouldn't you like to be gone till to-morrow morning?” “Yes,
sir, I should, sir.” “Well, you've been a faithful man, and you may.” Sich,
again, is life, but not often camp life.
I am busy on court-martial, having been appointed President
of the General Court-Martial of this division, — that is, having been
designated as senior officer. We sit in the morning, and I am amused to see how
kindly I take to the forms of law again. I am getting quite well again of my
bruise, but it is good easy work for a lame man. We do not know when we may
move, but I am getting to think that orders must come pretty soon now.
We had a visit from General Banks yesterday before the rain
began. The General visited our kitchens, and tasted, with apparent approval, my
doughnuts. I say mine, because I regard as, perhaps, the most successful
endeavor of my military life, the general introduction of doughnuts into the
regiment. It you could have seen the helplessness in which the flour ration
left us, and the stupidity of the men in its use, you would hail, as the dawn,
the busy frying of doughnuts which goes on here now. Two barrels is a small
allowance for a company. They are good to carry in the haversack, and 'stick by
a feller on the march.' And when the men have not time to build an oven, as
often they have not, the idea is invaluable. Pots of beans baked in holes in
the ground, with a pan of brown bread on top, is also a recent achievement,
worthy of Sunday morning at an old Exeter boarding-house. The band produced
that agreeable concord yesterday, and contributed from their success to my
breakfast. Our triumphs, just now, are chiefly culinary; but an achievement of
that kind is not to be despised. “A soldier's courage lies in his stomach,”
said Frederick the Great. And I mean that the commissary of our division and
the commissary of our regiment, and the captains and the cooks, shall accept
the doctrine and apply its lessons, if I can make them. . . . .
By the way, do you know that I have grown the most alarming
beard of modern times? I am inclined to think it must be so. It has the true
glare of Mars, and is, I flatter myself, warlike, though not becoming. I
have forborne allusion to it in the tenderness of its youth and the uncertainty
of its hue, but now that it has taken on full proportions and color, I announce
it to you as a decided feature.
Dr. ––– may be a good reasoner, but he can't reason the
Secession army into winter-quarters in Philadelphia. There is no real cause for
depression. Subduing rebellion, conquering traitors, in short, war, is the work
of soldiers. Soldiers are a product of time, and so it comes that our mad
impatience of delay is chastised by disaster. In the fulness of time, we shall
wipe out this Southern army, as surely as the time passes. But we have got to work
for it instead of talking about it. That is all. Between the
beginning of this letter and the end is a course of the sun. It has been
scratched at intervals, and now I look out of my tent on a glorious sunset, and
the music is just beginning for parade.
SOURCE: Elizabeth Amelia Dwight, Editor, Life and
Letters of Wilder Dwight: Lieut.-Col. Second Mass. Inf. Vols., p. 99-102
