General Mitchell called this afternoon and requested me to form the regiment in a square. I did so, and he addressed it for twenty minutes on guard duty, throwing in here and there patriotic expressions, which encouraged and delighted the boys very much. When he departed they gave him three rousing cheers.
SOURCE: John Beatty, The Citizen-soldier: Or, Memoirs of a Volunteer, p. 87
A reconnoissance was made beyond Green river yesterday, and no enemy found.
We are short of supplies; entirely out of sugar, coffee, and candles, and the boys to-night indicated some faint symptoms of insubordination but I assured them we had made every effort possible to obtain these articles, and so quieted them.
Major Keifer was officer in charge of the camp yesterday, and when making the rounds last night a sentinel challenged, "Halt! who comes there?" The sergeant responded, "Grand rounds," whereupon the weary and disappointed Irishman retorted in angry tones: "Divil take the grand rounds, I thought it the relafe comin'."
SOURCE: John Beatty, The Citizen-soldier: Or, Memoirs of a Volunteer, p. 87-8
The pleasant days have ended. The clouds hang heavy and black, and the rain descends in torrents.
After eleven o'clock last night I accompanied General Mitchell to ten regiments, and with him made the grand rounds in most of them. As we rode from camp to camp the General made the time most agreeable and profitable to me, by delivering a very able lecture on military affairs; laying down what he denominated a simple and sure foundation for the beginner to build upon.
The wind is high and our stove smokes prodigiously. I have been out in the rain endeavoring to turn the pipe, but have not mended the matter at all. The Major insists that it is better to freeze than to be smoked to death, so we shall extinguish the fire and freeze.
Adjutant Mitchell has been commissioned captain and assigned to Company C.
SOURCE: John Beatty, The Citizen-soldier: Or, Memoirs of a Volunteer, p. 88
SOURCE: Jerry Thomas, How to Mix Drinks: Or, The Bon-vivant's Companion (1862) p. 25
BLOG EDITORS NOTE: For a punch recipe that includes hot water see 69th Regiment Punch.
SOURCE: John Beatty, The Citizen-soldier: Or, Memoirs of a Volunteer, pp. 88-9
No orders to advance. Armies travel slowly indeed. Within fifteen miles of the enemy and idly rotting in the mud.
Acting Brigadier-General Marrow when informed that Dumont would assume command of the brigade, became suddenly and violently ill, asked for and obtained a thirty-day leave.
I would give much to be home with the children during this holiday time; but unfortunately my health is too good, and will continue so in spite of me. The Major, poor man, is troubled in the same way.
SOURCE: John Beatty, The Citizen-soldier: Or, Memoirs of a Volunteer, p. 89
Lieutenant St. John goes to Louisville with a man who was arrested as a spy; and strange to say the arrest was made at the instance of the prisoner's uncle, who is a captain in the Union army.
Captain Mitchell assumes command of company C to-morrow. The Colonel is incensed at the Major and me, because of the Adjutant's promotion. He intended to make a place in the company for a noncommissioned officer, who begged money from the boys to buy him a sword. We astonished him, however, by showing three commissions—one for the Adjutant, and one each for a first and second lieutenant, all of the company's own choosing.
SOURCE: John Beatty, The Citizen-soldier: Or, Memoirs of a Volunteer, pp. 89-90
Called on General Dumont this morning; he is a small man, with a thin piping voice, but an educated and affable gentleman. Did not make his acquaintance in West Virginia, he being unwell while there and confined to his quarters.
This is a peculiar country; there are innumerable caverns, and every few rods places are found where the crust of the earth appears to have broken and sunk down hundreds of feet. One mile from camp there is a large and interesting cave, which has been explored probably by every soldier of the regiment.
SOURCE: John Beatty, The Citizen-soldier: Or, Memoirs of a Volunteer, p. 90
General Buell is here, and a grand review took place to-day.
Since we left Elkwater there has been a steadily increasing element of insubordination manifested in many ways, but notably in an unwillingness to drill, in stealing from camp and remaining away for days. This, if tolerated much longer, will demoralize even the best of men and render the regiment worthless.
SOURCE: John Beatty, The Citizen-soldier: Or, Memoirs of a Volunteer, p. 90
Moving only about
two miles, we stopped for the night on the road leading from Jacinto to
Marietta. Had quite a hard rain in the evening.
SOURCE: Richard R.
Hancock, Hancock's Diary: Or, A History of the Second Tennessee Confederate
Cavalry, p. 174
Moving two miles
again, we halted for a few days at Marietta, a small village in Itawamba
County, twenty-one miles from Jacinto.
A part of the army
stopped at Baldwin, a station on the Mobile and Ohio Railroad, twelve miles
west of Marietta, while the rest went further south. The wagons belonging to
our battalions were at Baldwin.
SOURCE: Richard R.
Hancock, Hancock's Diary: Or, A History of the Second Tennessee Confederate
Cavalry, p. 174
McKnight's Company
went on a scout toward Bay Spring. They brought no news of interest.
SOURCE: Richard R.
Hancock, Hancock's Diary: Or, A History of the Second Tennessee Confederate
Cavalry, p. 174
The battalion fell
back almost three miles from Marietta.
SOURCE: Richard R.
Hancock, Hancock's Diary: Or, A History of the Second Tennessee Confederate
Cavalry, p. 174
After a march of
about seventeen miles on the Fulton road, we camped within a few hundred yards
of the Tombigbee River, near where Colonel Bennett's Battalion was camped.
SOURCE: Richard R.
Hancock, Hancock's Diary: Or, A History
of the Second Tennessee Confederate Cavalry, p. 174
We moved about two
hundred yards and encamped on the bank of the Tombigbee. Our wagons were
brought out to us, loaded with corn, provisions and cooking vessels. Our tents
were left at the railroad. Our wagons had not been with us,
except two nights at Booneville, since they left us at Jacinto (May 5th).
Fulton, the county
seat of Itawamba County, was about one mile from our camp, on the east side of
the Tombigbeę, and about twenty-one miles from Marietta.
SOURCE: Richard R.
Hancock, Hancock's Diary: Or, A History of the Second Tennessee Confederate
Cavalry, pp. 174-5
From early morning
(or at least from the earliest hour of which I am personally-cognizant) the
town was all agog about the Japanese ambassadors. Streets were already swarming
as I went downtown. Hardly an omnibus but was filled full. Every other person,
at least, was manifestly a rustic or a stranger. Flags everywhere. Small
detachments of our valiant militia marching, grim and sweaty, to their
respective positions. Dragoons, hussars, and lancers, by twos and threes,
trotting about with looks of intense uneasiness. The whole aspect of things
indicated some great event at hand.
I left Wall Street
at about two-thirty, intending merely to walk uptown and observe the humors of
the dense crowd that lined both sides of Broadway, for I was so sick of talk
about the Japanese that I vowed that I would not see them. But I met young Dudley
Field, who kindly insisted on my taking advantage of certain eligible windows
in his office on Broadway. There I found his sister, Miss Jenny, Miss Laura
Belden, Judge Sutherland and Judge Leonard, Gerard, and one or two more, with
strawberries and ice cream, and so forth, and saw all the show to great
advantage.
Quite an imposing
turnout of horse, foot, and artillery. Ditto of aldermen in barouches and
yellow kids, trying to look like gentlemen. The first-chop Japanese sat in
their carriage like bronze statues, aristocratically calm and indifferent. The
subordinates grinned, and wagged their ugly heads, and waved their fans to the
ladies in the windows. Every window in Broadway was full of them. The most
striking object was the crowd that closed in and followed the procession.
Broadway was densely filled, sidewalks and trottoir both, for many blocks, and
mostly with roughs. Bat the police kept good order. I made my way uptown
through side streets with difficulty, for they were thronged with currents of sightseers
flowing off from the great central canal, and of loafers, slinging along with
the characteristic loaferine trot to get ahead of the procession and have
another look at the Japs. . . .
Two old fools,
Samuel Neill and Tom Bryan, have been making themselves ridiculous by going to
North Carolina in this weather and fighting a duel. The former, they say, has a
bullet hole through the arm. They got into a squabble “late at e’en, drinking
the wine” at the Union Club, over the weighty question of Garibaldi’s
nationality. One said he was a Scotchman, and the other said he wasn’t, and
they punched each other’s heads without being able to settle it that way.
Garibaldi, by-the-by, holds his own. Success to him, filibuster as he is. There
are limits even to conservatism.
Professor Dwight has
been heard at length in our Law School appeal by the Court of Appeals, which
held a special evening session for that purpose. Judge Denio and O’Conor and
others say it was a very able argument. . . .
Was at the Savings Bank
Thursday afternoon, taking Hamilton Fish’s place as attending trustee. His
daughter. Miss Sarah, has just married one Sidney Webster, and the Governor had
to do the honors of the wedding reception.
There is talk of the
Democrats nominating Judge Nelson. I’d gladly vote for him, especially so
against “Abe,” whose friends seem to rest his claims to high office chiefly on
the fact that he split rails when he was a boy. I am tired of this shameless
clap-trap. The log-cabin hard-cider craze of 1840 seemed spontaneous. This
hurrah about rails and railsplitters seems a deliberate attempt to manufacture
the same kind of furor by appealing to the shallowest prejudices of the lowest
class. It ought to fail, and I hope it may; but unless the Democrats put up a strong
man, it will succeed.
SOURCE: Allan Nevins
and Milton Halset Thomas, Editors, Diary of George Templeton Strong,
Vol. 3, pp. 32-3
Attended the British
Consul this morning, closing a commission to take testimony for the Court of
Sessions.12 Talked with him about the proposed visit of the Prince
of Wales. Archibald seems to have been called on by his government to advise
whether the Prince, if he come here, shall accept the invitation of the city
government or decline it and travel through the country incognito. He wanted to
know what I thought about it, and I decidedly recommended that this royal imp
should visit us as an English gentleman or nobleman, and accept no public
hospitalities, for the tender mercies of the Common Council are cruel. But Mr.
Archibald thinks otherwise, and he may be right. A frank acceptance by the
Prince of any civility paid him by our public functionaries, such as they are,
would flatter the public vanity and bring us closer to England. . . . Crowd at
the Metropolitan Hotel all day, except at intervals when dispersed by a shower.
People stand and stare at the windows for a vision of some ugly Mongol mug
protruded for a moment and then withdrawn.
_______________
12 E. M. Archibald had been the able British
consul since 1857.
SOURCE: Allan Nevins
and Milton Halset Thomas, Editors, Diary of George Templeton Strong,
Vol. 3, p. 34
This evening with
Mr. Ruggles to Dr. Gilman’s, Thirteenth Street, to meet sundry of the
professors of our Medical College and consider whether any kind of scientific
post-graduate course can be evolved out of nothing by concerted action between
Columbia College and this, its new ally. President King and Torrey were there,
and the Medical College was represented by Gilman, Parker, Delafield, Clark,
Dalton, and other medicine men, generally of high caste. We talked the matter
over and agreed to meet again a fortnight hence. Something may come of it, but
my expectations are moderate. The Medical College building, at the comer of
Twenty-third and Fourth Avenue, is convenient and accessible, but we want men
of larger calibre than Joy, McCulloh, Dr. Delafield, and Dr. Parker. . .13
The Democratic
Baltimore Convention is still sitting, and none the easier for sitting. The
great old Democratic Party is in articulo
mortis; its convention is abolishing of itself, and just on the eve of
suicide by dismemberment and disintegration, after the manner of certain
star-fishes (vide Gosse). If Douglas
be nominated, a Southern limb drops off. If any other man is nominated, a
Northwestern ray or arm secedes. Southern swashbucklers demand an ultra-nigger
platform that would cost the party every Northern state; unless it be adopted,
they will depart to put on their war paint and—whet their scalping knives. The
worst temper prevails; delegates punch each other and produce revolvers. In
short, a wasps’ nest divided against itself is a pastoral symphony compared to
this Witenagemot. Its session has abounded thus far in scandalous, shameful
brutalities and indecencies that disgrace the whole country and illustrate the
terrible pace at which we seem traveling down hill toward sheer barbarism and
savagery.
The Convention has
made little progress yet—has not even succeeded in defining its own identity.
Its throes and gripings have thus far been on the question whether certain
chivalric delegations that seceded at Charleston shall be received back
digested and assimilated, or rejected as foreign matter. The New York
delegation seems to hold the balance of power. After Douglas, Dickinson and
Horatio Seymour are talked of; I could vote for the latter. There is a Nelson
movement, too, silent as yet, but growing.14 But the elements of the
Convention are in unstable combination, and it is likely to decompose with an
explosion like chloride of nitrogen, or disintegrate like a Prince Rupert’s
drop, on the slightest provocation before it nominates anybody. And, if one
half of its bullies and blackguards and Southern gentlemen will make free use
of their revolvers on the other half, during the general reaction and melee
that is like to accompany the act of decomposition, and will then get
themselves decently hanged for homicide, the country will be safe; and millions
yet unborn will bless the day when the Baltimore Convention of 1860 exploded
and the Democratic Party ceased to exist.
13 Willard Parker (1800-1884), for whom the Willard
Parker Hospital for Infectious Diseases in New York is named, had studied in
Europe and held chairs of anatomy and surgery in several medical schools in
this country before he joined the faculty of the College of Physicians and
Surgeons as professor of principles and practice of surgery (1839-1870). Edward
Delafield (1794—1875), ophthalmologist and surgeon, founded the New York Eye
and Ear Infirmary in 1818. He occupied the chair of obstetrics and diseases of
women in the College of Physicians and Surgeons from 1825 to 1838, and was
president of the College from 1858 to 1875. Alonzo Clark (1807-1887) held the
chair of physiology and pathology in the College of Physicians and Surgeons
from 1848 to 1855, when he became professor of pathology and practical medicine
in the same school. John Call Dalton (1825—1889) was the first physician in
America to devote himself exclusively to experimental physiology and related
sciences. His studies with Claude Bernard in Paris turned his ambition from
practice to teaching, and he introduced the experimental method in teaching of
physiology, thus opening a new era in medical education. He occupied the chair
of physiology in the College of Physicians and Surgeons 1855-1883, and served
as president 1884-1889.
14 Strong’s unwillingness to vote for the
politician Daniel S. Dickinson (1800-1866) is understandable. The movement for
Justice Samuel Nelson of the Supreme Court (1792-1873) developed no strength.
SOURCE: Allan Nevins
and Milton Halset Thomas, Editors, Diary of George Templeton Strong,
Vol. 3, pp. 34-6
Mr. Ruggles came in
this evening and reports that the rump of the Convention has nominated Douglas.
Afterwards came Walter Cutting, very kindly offering me tickets for the grand
ball Monday night in honor of the Japanese embassy. Tickets are in great demand
and hardly to be got by any one who has not an uncle or a confederate in the
City Councils. It will be a showy and lavish entertainment, but neither Ellie
nor I care to assist. Have encountered attaches of the embassy twice, looking
over books and buying largely at Appleton's new store. They seem intelligent
and observant, talk in soft oriental whispers, and contrive to make themselves
understood by Kernot and Allen and the other salesmen. Books on the industrial
arts, geographies, atlases, and high-colored lithograph illustrations interest
them especially. They buy largely, also, of children’s books, and say "new
language—child’s book— very good.’’
SOURCE: Allan Nevins
and Milton Halset Thomas, Editors, Diary of George Templeton Strong,
Vol. 3, p. 36
“The day was ushered
in," as the newspapers say, with the usual racket, which has not yet
abated. I lounged downtown after breakfast, and made an expedition to Jersey
City; partly for want of something to do, and partly to give Miss Rosalie Ruggles
the latest news from Barrington. A sweltering hot day it has been, as I found
out on my walk home after lunching at Delmonico’s.
15 The Great
Eastern, a British liner designed by Russell Scott weighing almost 19,000
deadweight tons, the leviathan of her day, had reached New York, June 28, to
find the shores black with throngs excited over her arrival. In the first five
days 143,764 people paid to visit her.
SOURCE: Allan Nevins
and Milton Halset Thomas, Editors, Diary of George Templeton Strong,
Vol. 3, p. 37
