We are under
marching orders again—ready to move at a minute's notice. The Ninth Army Corps
is detached from the Army of the Potomac and is ordered to report to General
Dix, at Fortress Monroe. The supposition is we go on an expedition somewhere—rumor
says Vicksburg. The first detachment has gone, and we are awaiting the return
of the transports. The men are well pleased with the idea of going farther
south. For myself, I say any place but this. When we came here the country was
a wilderness, covered with a heavy growth of scrub pine. Now it is a desert
with scarcely a tree, and not a fence rail for miles in any direction.
It seems that
Richmond has lost its strategic importance, and the "decisive blow"
which was to have fallen there has been transferred to five other points, viz:
Vicksburg, Port Hudson, Rosa's and Foster's expeditions, and Charleston.
"If these prove successful," say the Washington papers, "the
rebellion will end in thirty days." God grant them all success. When I
survey the past history of the war I can see but little in the immediate future
to encourage hope. The conviction is forced upon me that if the North subdue
the South, the war has but just begun. It can and will be done, but time and
persevering effort only will accomplish it. The people are too impatient. They
demand important victories now, while fortified some place—Vicksburg, for
instance—can only be taken by siege, and siege means weeks and months of
waiting.
Government, urged on
by the people, acts as if the salvation of the country depends on all this
being accomplished before the fourth of March. But I see nothing but failure in
haste.
SOURCE: David Lane,
A Soldier's Diary: The Story of a Volunteer, 1862-1865, p. 28-9
