Good! I have been looking for it! The First and Second
Divisions of the Sixth Corps arrived in Washington last night just in season by
double quicking through the city from the boats to drive the enemy from the
fortifications; can hear heavy guns in that direction this morning; don't know
what the difficulty is but if the rest of our Corps is there the Johnnies will
never take the capital, and we are all right. Hurrah! I am on picket to-day at
Mr. Donaldson's, a wealthy Union man who has a lovely home and family. This is
an aristocratic neighborhood, and people embarrass me with their courteous
attentions. I would much rather be left to myself, for I'm tired and haven't
anything with me but the clothes worn through so many battles, besmeared,
ragged, riddled with bullets and torn by exploding shells; so I am not dressed
to appear at table with conventional people; but still they insist upon it, and
what plagues me more make a lion of me. Oh dear! I'd rather make an assault on
such a place as the “Bloody Angle” at Spottsylvania! The young ladies are
awfully pretty, so nice and attentive, too, that I feel overwhelmed. I'm not
sensible enough, though, not to wish myself somewhere else, for I'm dirty and
unpresentable. It's truly a sunny spot in a soldier's life, though, to run
across such families occasionally when presentable. General Tyler has come in
to-night; all's quiet.
SOURCE: Lemuel Abijah Abbott, Personal Recollections
and Civil War Diary, 1864, p. 120
