CAMP AT CEDAR CREEK, VIRGINIA, October 27, 1864.
MY DARLING: — Yours of the 18th — the first since the boy reached me last night. Very glad you were able to write so soon. I don't want you to make any exertion to write — just write one line and it will be enough. Half a page of your little note sheet will be a long letter now.
We have had so far fine weather. Our camps are as comfortable as possible. We expect to stay here until the season is too far advanced to admit of any formidable raids into Maryland or Pennsylvania. The Rebels, it is known, have been resolved to create a panic if possible in time to affect the Presidential election.
Some of the foolish fellows in the Sixth and Nineteenth Corps, feeling envious of our laurels in previous battles, have got the Eastern correspondents to represent the rout of Crook's Corps as worse than theirs, etc., etc. There is not a word of truth in it. A sentence in General Sheridan's dispatch was no doubt intended to correct this in a quiet way. “Crook's Corps lost seven pieces of artillery, the Nineteenth, eleven, and the Sixth Corps, six.” We were attacked before them, and of course under more unfavorable circumstances, and yet we lost no more. In fact I lost nothing. My division fell back, but brought everything we had—our two cows, tents, and everything. Of course we lost no artillery, but did save an abandoned piece of the Nineteenth Corps.
I hope to see you soon. It is impossible now to tell when we shall be in a situation to ask for leaves of absence, but I suspect it will be within a month or six weeks. If we get on the railroad, I can go for a few days and not be missed.
The Rebels have not shown their heads since the last crushing defeat. Nothing but a determination to interfere with the election will bring back their forces. — Love to all.
SOURCE: Charles Richard Williams, editor, Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes, Volume 2, p. 530-1
