Major Wilder Dwight: August 3, 1861

Maryland Heights, August 3, 1861, in Bivouac.

Our new leafy camp presents an odd appearance. Two or three ingenious men belonging to the band have fitted me up a bedstead of branches and boughs, and have thatched my tent with leaves, so that the breeze rustles cool through it as I write. But we have few incidents. The bugler is teaching the skirmish calls, which makes a confused variety of very bad music; but except that, we are in the sultry stillness of high noon. . . .

I think we are doomed to a life of warm inaction for many weeks, while the awakened North will, I trust, give itself cordially to the task of organization. We must have an immense army. We must feed it, teach it, equip it, and all this must be done without delay. We must pay it promptly too. Our men all suffer now for want of the few comforts their pay would bring. Again, we must feed them well, honestly, not with bad meat or mouldy bread. I believe a little attention to these two matters will shorten the war six months. We demand a great deal of the men, we must give them all they are entitled to, and we must do this a great deal better than it has been done. I could write much on this score, but I am not inspector-general, my report will not go to head-quarters, so I will try to give you something more lively. Yet these are the pressing thoughts of one in the system who feels its pressure. Men willing and devoted you can have; but one central, organizing will you cannot have, I fear. Never mind, we have got to accomplish the result sooner or later. Only I think I can see most clearly how it ought to be done. Health is a condition of courage, and without it you cannot have an army Yet there are colonels, within three miles of us, who have not had their men in bathing within a month, though the rivers flow close by. Discipline is another condition of concerted and organized movement; yet, in several regiments, obedience is the exception, and orders take the shape of diffident requests. This has been unavoidable in the three months' militia. It must be corrected in the three years' army that is to fight the war. Here I am preaching away on the same text. I will stop and try again tomorrow.

Sunday has come, and brought with it the usual inspection of the regiment. Under the glaring sun, it was a severer work than common. The Colonel was bent upon having it thoroughly done, however, and so we made a long story of it. On our outpost, special duty, the regiment must be kept efficiently ready for sudden emergencies; and all matters which at Camp Andrew might have seemed merely formal, here assume practical and obvious importance. The hard work, hot weather, and soldier's fare begin to tell upon the men, and they are not as well satisfied as they were. They see the undertaking in a new form, and they are in the worst stages of homesickness too. The contagious disorderliness of other regiments, with lower standards of discipline and drill, also has its bad effect on them. Again, the inaction is depressing to the men, and they long for an occasion to fight. Still further, the want of vigorous health is a predisposing cause of discontent. The result is, that the regiment seems to lack willingness, obedience, enthusiasm, and vigor. It wants what is called tone morale. How to get it? There is the problem. Colonel Andrews has been over to see me to-day, and we have been talking regiment for a couple of hours. Vexing our minds with problems, and inquiring eagerly for solutions. I do not mean to intimate that we are not better off than others. I trust we are, much. In all military and material advantages, we certainly have got the start of them. And in these respects we are making every effort to hold our own. But there are and will be new problems before us at every step. Several of our officers are sick or disabled, and we are working with a short allowance. This adds to the bother. There you have the lees of a conversation with the Lieutenant-Colonel, which I have just finished. It indicates a few of the perplexities that belong to my position, but you need not let them discourage you. Nor do I allow them to halt me on my way. The march is to be kept up, and the obstacles are to be overcome or removed. Still, let no one think that because we are not fighting battles, therefore we are not serving our country. With all diffidence, and awaiting the correction of experience, I think we are now doing our hardest work. I should not write so much on this subject if it were not filling my mind completely. The same languor, undoubtedly, is creeping over the army everywhere. The only remedy for the trouble is to bring the men to their duty with a strong hand. The romance is gone. The voluntariness has died out in the volunteer. He finds himself devoted to regular service. A regular he must be made, and the rules and articles of war, in all their arbitrary severity, will not sit lightly upon him. So much for my Sunday sermon. I got your pleasant note of Thursday yesterday afternoon. I hope the boys will enjoy the Adirondacks. I am having my camp-life, this summer, on other terms. Everything goes well with me. I never was happier in my life.

SOURCE: Elizabeth Amelia Dwight, Editor, Life and Letters of Wilder Dwight: Lieut.-Col. Second Mass. Inf. Vols., p. 65-8

Colonel Charles Russell Lowell to John C. Bancroft, May 24, 1863

Camp Near Washington, May 24, '63.

We have been ten pleasant, sultry, summer days in camp here, monotonous, but enough occupied not to dislike the monotony, — dry and cool and dewy in the morning, and still and cool in the evenings, — with a very pretty view from my tent front (where we sit under a fly) — nothing striking, only green hills and fields and cattle, and off on the right the Potomac, and beyond rise the heights, where they have put forts, — you would not suppose it, however, it looks as peaceful as a Sunday should. It makes me infernally homesick, John, — I should like to be at home, even to go to church, — nay, I should even like to have a chaplain here to read the service and a few chapters I would select from the New Testament, — you’ll think it must be a peaceful scene to lull me into such a lamblike mood.¹

Lamblike, however, seems to be the order of the day, — unless, indeed, Grant's success at Vicksburg is to be believed. The Army of the Potomac is commonly reported to be going into summer quarters.

_______________

¹ Soon after, Rev. Charles A. Humphreys was appointed Chaplain of the Second Cavalry, and joined the regiment in Virginia. He was cordially received and treated with consideration by Colonel Lowell, and remained with the regiment until the close of the war, except during some months in the summer and autumn of 1864, when he was in a Southern prison with Major Forbes and Lieutenant Amory, all having been captured in a disastrous fight at Zion's Church. Mr. Humphreys held his Colonel in the highest esteem. He wrote an article about him, in the Harvard Monthly, in February, 1886, to which I am indebted. It was through Chaplain Humphreys' instrumentality that the marble bust of Colonel Lowell., which adorns the Memorial Hall, at Cambridge, was made by the sculptor Daniel Chester French, — a gift of the officers and friends of the regiment.

SOURCE: Edward Waldo Emerson, Life and Letters of Charles Russell Lowell, p. 247, 418

John Brown to Mary Ann Day Brown, January 17, 1851

Springfield, Mass., Jan. 17, 1851.

Dear Wife, — . . . Since the sending off to slavery of Long from New York, I have improved my leisure hours quite busily with colored people here, in advising them how to act, and in giving them all the encouragement in my power. They very much need encouragement and advice; and some of them are so alarmed that they tell me they cannot sleep on account of either themselves or their wives and children. I can only say I think I have been enabled to do something to revive their broken spirits. I want all my family to imagine themselves in the same dreadful condition. My only spare time being taken up (often till late hours at night) in the way I speak of, has prevented me from the gloomy homesick feelings which had before so much oppressed me: not that I forget my family at all.

SOURCE: Franklin B. Sanborn, The Life and Letters of John Brown, p. 132

Diary of Alexander G. Downing: Monday, August 17, 1863

Our company went out on picket this morning. There is always danger of cavalry raids, particularly evenings. Some more of the sick boys were examined this morning by the doctor. The boys were hoping to get a sick furlough. There is some homesickness in the regiment, but a number will be made well by a thirty-day furlough. I am in good health and it is more than a year since I have had to report to the doctor, and then he marked me "not fit for duty" for only three days.

Source: Alexander G. Downing, Edited by Olynthus B., Clark, Downing’s Civil War Diary, p. 135

An Alabama volunteer writes from one of the rebel camps:

“There’s a new disease broken out here – the “camp disease,” they call it.  The first symptom is a horror of gunpowder.  The patient can’t abide the smell of it, but is sieged with a nervous trembling of the knees, and a whiteness about the liver, and a longing inclination to advance backward.  That’s the way water serves mad dogs.  Then comes what our major calls home fever, and next the sufferer’s wife and nine children are taken sick; after which the poor fellow takes a collapse and then a relapse.  But it is mighty hard to get a discharge or even a furlough – awful hard.  Fact is you can’t do it without working the thing pretty low down.

“I tell you what, Bob, between you and me I’m afraid I’m taking the disease myself; I don’t like the reports we hear every day from the coast.  We hear cannon booming down there by the hour, and they say the Yankees are going to play the very devil with our ducks.  I think I can detect a faint smell of powder in the breeze, and feel a strange desire to go into some hole or other.  It may be the climate, I hope so, but don’t see how that should make me feel so cold about the haversack every time I see a bayonet.  If I had only some good spirits now, to take every morning, I think I could stand it very well.  Please send me some immediately upon receipt of this (N. B. – Mark the box “Drugs, care of Surgeon Second Batt. Ala. Vols’.)  Our Major is as sharp as a brier and down on brandy like a duck on a Junebug.”

– Published in The Burlington Weekly Hawk-Eye, Burlington, Iowa, Saturday, March 1, 1862, p. 2

Frank R. Milton Letter: Jany 6th 1865

Head-Quarters Post of Nashville,
Nashville, Tenn. Jany 6th, 1865

Dear Father,

Your welcome letter of Jany 1st was received last night and I was pleased to hear from you No, I am not homesick, but of course I would like to be home a few days to see you all. I have no reason to be homesick for I am a great deal more comfortably situated than most soldiers and am very thankful of it. I am so much obliged to receive a box from home and thank you heartily for sending it. I met Mr. Caffat last night he is Sutler of the 12th. Iowa, and was very glad to see him or anybody from Dubuque.

I am very sorry indeed to hear of your being unwell and sincerely hope that you will be better. I don’t see why you should not succeed in your business. You have the best trade of any of them in Dubuque, and I am confident that you will prosper. So you have gone in to “mining” again. That is the most uncertain business of them all and it is my earnest wish that you will make a big strike. I wrote to you a few days ago and requested you to send me a few things. I would not have asked you but we do not get paid untill March and perhaps not then and I am entirely out of the things I asked for. The 5th were in a fight and Henry Saulsbury my old “partner”was wounded, but not dangerously. Capt. Moreing acted very disgracefully he got the boys in a tight place and then left them. Charley Weigel (Sergt, and a braver soldier never rode a horse) led them out. Willie Andrew is all right, but is not here he is “front” with Gene Thomas Army Moving is not thought much of in fact very few of the officers in the regiment have a good standing. I am so glad I am not with the regiment. I think my getting a commission is not very favorable just now. But if I could get an appointment in some regiment from the state that will be raised under this new call 300.00 I would take it. I will send recommends from the Staff and if you could get some influential man with the Governor to put this thing through I would be greatly obliged, one of the clerks has just received our appointment in the 14th U.S.C.T. I would never accept a commission in a nigger regiment. You know a great deal more of the news than we do only what goes on the Past command Kiss the girls and Mother and Fred. with love to all and many wishes for your speedy recovery I remain

Your Affectionate Son
Frank R. Milton

From the 112th

We are premitted [sic] to copy the following extracts from a letter from George Maxfield, of Co. F 112th Illinois regiment, now at Camp Wolford, near Somerset, Kentucky to his father in this place. The later is dated June 5, 1863.

“I received your kind letter last evening and was glad to hear from you. You can hardly imagine how much pleasure it gives a soldier to hear from the loved ones at home and I think if parents and friends would write oftener to their friends in the army, it would save a great amount of sickness. I know of cases of sickness that were caused by “homesickness.” I don’t write this because I think you have been delinquent in that respect, but because you may see some who have friends in the army, and even in the 112th, who might write more and oftener and by doing so do a vast amount of good – tell them a little town talk, or fireside talk, – what the little ones say about the war, or anything; it will do no harm; but tell them to write.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*

On the 2nd of June we had orders to pack up all clothing not drawn, and all extra clothing of the men, box it up and have it distinctly marked and sent to the rear. Officers would not be allowed to take but thirty pounds; the men, but one change of underclothing. So we went to work and had everything in readiness at ten o’clock according to orders. We were all ready to march, and are still ready, but I think we are elected to stay in Kentucky all summer. I am willing to stay anywhere, or do any thing to help put down this rebellion.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*

I was talking with an old man a few days since, about Vallandigham’s arrest. He said “that is the way to do it. They have begun in the right place, and I believe if they would keep on at the good work, the war would not last longer than this summer. The only thing that keeps it up now, is the copperheads at the north. It inspires the rebels with the idea that they may yet see a divided north against a united south.” This from an old man who has stood as a Union man through all the troubles in Kentucky. The “rebs” have robbed him of all the horses and cattle he had.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Co. A went out on a scout a few days ago, on the other side of the river. I think they crossed at Mill Springs. They captured nine horses and five men, drove in the rebel pickets and came back. There were 150 of our men and about a regiment of the rebels; but the “rebs” were afraid to follow our men up, and our men knew enough to keep out of shooting distance.

We have just got [illegible] [illegible] Co. F got very good ones, but they are [illegible] [illegible].

– Published in the Stark County News, Toulon, Illinois, Thursday June 18, 1863

Note: The microfilm print of this page varied from light on the lower left hand corner to darker in the upper right hand corner. The last two paragraphs of this letter were in the upper right corner of the page & consequently the last sentence was extreemly hard to read. I will need to check this transcription againt the microfilm to verify the exact wording of the last couple of sentences. Yet another thing to add to my ever growing “To Do” list.