Diary of George Templeton Strong, October 28, 1860

The talk today is that Fusionism may carry this state after all. Then the election goes into the House and would be long contested before a majority could unite on any one of the three. Excitement would be prolonged and sectional fury intensified. I don’t feel like voting for Lincoln, but I should be sorry to see New York frightened into voting for anybody else, even if the inevitable crisis were thereby postponed to 1864. It may as well be met now; and were Lincoln to be beat, I believe the Southern states would go into convention, nevertheless, so scared and angry are they.

Old Mrs. Hayward of South Carolina is at the New York Hotel in deep affliction and alarm because it is well known that “the abolitionists” have consigned large invoices of strychnine and arsenic to the slaves of her neighborhood. So Mrs. S. B. Ruggles reports, who saw her yesterday.

Mrs. Sally Hampton spoke the other evening at Mrs. Peters’s of Dr. Lieber’s having lately presided at a German Republican meeting at Cooper Institute. “So unfortunate for his son” (in business at Columbia or Charleston), “he was doing so well, and, of course, this ruins all his prospects at the South”!!! This is tyranny beyond King Bomba. If severance come, we must console ourselves for its calamity by remembering that we are freed from a most disreputable partner.

The Hon. Cobb, at Duncan, Sherman & Co.’s office, has been openly damning the blindness and stupidity of the capitalists who have taken the United States ten million loan at a premium, and declaring it is not worth fifty cents on the dollar. (So Charley Strong reported on respectable authority.) Pretty talk for a Secretary of the Treasury! I guess he put this loan into the market just at this time in the expectation it would not be taken, and hoping to make capital out of its failure for his own clique of traitors.

SOURCE: Allan Nevins and Milton Halset Thomas, Editors, Diary of George Templeton Strong, Vol. 3, p. 55

Diary of Dr. Alfred L. Castleman, August 9, 1861

What a wonderful effect the hardships of camp life, with the troubles and cares which they entail on a surgeon, have had on my health. For many years I have been dyspeptic. Now I can eat what I please, and go without sleep almost entirely, and suffer no inconvenience. Last night, at 11 o'clock, after having ate a piece of hard salt beef for my supper, I "cared for" a pint of rich ice cream, and feel no inconvenience from it to-day. This would kill an ordinary civil man. I have to work very hard, but feel it a great comfort to work amongst the sick without suffering from fatigue, as I have been accustomed to.

Having received an order this morning from Gen. Dix to put all my sick into general hospital, and finding them bitterly opposed, I visited Fort McHenry, saw Gen. D., and prevailed on him to rescind the order.

I was highly gratified with what I saw at Fort McHenry. It, being the first equipped fort I ever saw, was an object of much interest; its numerous cannon, large enough for a small soldier to sleep in, pointing in all directions overlooking Baltimore and guarding all the approaches to it. No matter from what direction you come, you find these monster guns looking right in your face. Low down behind the walls lie almost innumerable ugly bull-dog-looking mortars, not over two and a half feet long, loaded with a 20 to 40-pound shells filling them to the very muzzle, and ready to be vomited forth at the first approach of trouble. There, too, is the great Dahlgren, stretching its long black neck away beyond the embrasures, as if looking for an object into which to pour its monster shot and shell, or its shower of grape and cannister. Its howitzers are there, and its great Columbiads, into some of which I was strongly tempted to crawl and take a nap, but a sudden recollection of the history of Jonah reminded me that its stomach, too, might sicken, and that I might awake in a trip across the mighty deep on the wings of the wind. I didn't go in. The bright little brass 6, 8, and 10pounders, on the greater number of which Napoleon said God always smiled in battles, were conspicuous amongst these great leviathans, and above all, the newly invented rifle cannon, ready to demolish ships or houses at two to five miles distance.

Have lost no man yet from sickness, but I have one who, I fear, will not recover. He is supposed to be poisoned by a glass of lemonade, bought of a man suspected of being a rebel.

I have succeeded, by selling a half barrel of flour, and by the approval of a small requisition made on the commissary, in getting provisions of all kinds to make my little detachment comfortable.

SOURCE: Alfred L. Castleman, The Army of the Potomac. Behind the Scenes. A Diary of Unwritten History; From the Organization of the Army, by General George B. McClellan, to the close of the Campaign in Virginia about the First Day January, 1863, p. 10-12

Diary of Dr. Alfred L. Castleman, August 10, 1861

The poisoned soldier is very sick to-day, but I have hopes of his recovery. In a city where we have received so much kindness and attention as in Baltimore, it is painful to have to suspect anyone of so devilish an act as that of poisoning a man.

SOURCE: Alfred L. Castleman, The Army of the Potomac. Behind the Scenes. A Diary of Unwritten History; From the Organization of the Army, by General George B. McClellan, to the close of the Campaign in Virginia about the First Day January, 1863, p. 12