The colonel is out of humor with Lieutenant Rice for letting
men on guard go to their tents to sleep and scolds him severely in the presence
of his men. A little less grumbling and more instruction would improve the
regiment faster. The men are disconcerted whenever the colonel approaches; they
expect to be pitched into about something. A good man, but impatient and
fault-finding; in short, he is out of health, nervous system out of order.
Would he had sound health, and all would go well. He gives no instruction
either in drill or other military duties but fritters away his time on little
details which properly belong to clerks and inferior officers. — Begun to rain at noon, refreshing rather.
Our men returning from Sutton report our right wing under
Lieutenant-Colonel Matthews gone on to Summersville. Also that a party in
ambush fired on two companies of Colonel Lytle's regiment, killing one and
wounding four. This sort of murder must be stopped. The colonel is busy issuing
passes to citizens, the patrol or picquets having been ordered to stop all
persons travelling on the roads without passes. This must be a great annoyance
to the inhabitants. Is there enough benefit to be gained for all the hate we
shall stir up by it?
The mother of our adjutant at Camp Chase seeing a boy
walking up and down on his sentinel's beat took pity on him, sent him out a
glass of wine and a piece of cake with a stool to sit on while he ate and
drank. She told him not to keep walking so, to sit down and rest! She also
advised him to resign!
More rumors of the approach of Lee with fifteen thousand men
to attack our forces at Buchanan [Buckhannon]. Lieutenant Reichenbach with his
party of twenty men marched yesterday twenty-eight miles and today, by noon,
fifteen miles.
Joe Holt* makes the best war speeches of any man in the
land. It always braces my nerves and stirs my heart when I read them. At Camp
Joe Holt, near Louisville, he said: “Since the sword flamed over the portals of
Paradise until now, it has been drawn in no holier cause than that in which you
are engaged.”
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* Joseph Holt, born in Breckinridge County, Kentucky,
January 6, 1807; died in Washington, August 1, 1894. Famous as a jurist and an
orator. He was Postmaster-General in Buchanan's Cabinet for a time and in 1860,
when John B. Flood [sic] resigned, he
became Secretary of War. He was a vigorous Union man, urging his fellow
Kentuckians “to fly to the rescue of their country before it is everlastingly
too late.” In September, 1862, President Lincoln appointed him Judge-Advocate
General of the army, in which capacity he served long with great distinction.
SOURCE: Charles Richard Williams, editor, Diary and
Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes, Volume 2, p. 60-1