Diary of Judith W. McGuire: July 1, 1861

A rumour of a skirmish, in which the Messrs. Ashby were engaged, and that Richard Ashby was severely wounded. I trust it may not be true.

SOURCE: Judith W. McGuire, Diary of a Southern Refugee, During the War, p. 33

Diary of Private Alexander G. Downing: Monday, February 22, 1864

We had a long hard day's march, with our brigade leading the corps. There were some wide swamps to cross and we had to build corduroy roads of rails and pine trees, over which to move the artillery. It was late before we went into bivouac.

Source: Alexander G. Downing, Edited by Olynthus B., Clark, Downing’s Civil War Diary, p. 169

Diary of Corporal Charles H. Lynch: June 14, 1864

Called up by daylight. This morning a hot one. Must bid farewell to this town. The people will no doubt be pleased to see us leaving. We had a very quiet time here. Roads very dusty. Our scouts report the enemy in all directions. The boys are in good spirits as we go marching along, taking observations, looking for points of interest. Passed within four miles of Virginia Natural Bridge. Was in hopes that we could see it. These are rough, stony roads. After a hard march we reached the town of Buchanon, near high and lofty mountains. Here the enemy had burned the bridge. The Engineer and Pioneer Corps made the ruins strong enough for us to cross. We camp for the night in a wheat field. Thankful to stop for a rest, after marching about twenty-four miles. It looks to us as though we shall be obliged to climb the mountains tomorrow. The road leads in that direction. This is a wild looking country. The scenery grand. Very few people can be seen as we pass through the towns and villages on the line of march, going farther in the enemy's country, and away from our base of supplies. It makes us feel that we are in for much hard work and marching.

SOURCE: Charles H. Lynch, The Civil War Diary, 1862-1865, of Charles H. Lynch 18th Conn. Vol's, p. 76

Diary of Luman Harris Tenney: February 15, 1862

Theodore surprised me in the morning. Took a ride to Woodland Cemetery. Lizzie and Nettie came to camp. Heard Slade, Riddle and several others in the evening.

SOURCE: Frances Andrews Tenney, War Diary Of Luman Harris Tenney, p. 7

71st Indiana Infantry

Organized at Terre Haute, Ind., July 21 to August 18, 1862. Mustered in at Indianapolis August 18, 1862, and left State for Lexington, Ky., August 18. Battle of Richmond, Ky., August 30. Regiment mostly captured, paroled and sent to Indianapolis, Ind. Reorganizing at Indianapolis till December, 1862. Ordered to Kentucky. Action at Muldraugh's Hill, Ky., December 27, 1862. Regiment again captured. Paroled and sent to Indianapolis, and on duty there till August 26, 1863. Designation of Regiment changed to 6th Indiana Cavalry February 22, 1863. (See 6th Indiana Cavalry.)

SOURCE: Frederick H. Dyer, A Compendium of the War of the 3, p. Rebellion, Part 1145

Diary of Private Alexander G. Downing: Sunday, February 21, 1864

The weather is fine for marching. After a night's rest, we started early this morning and reaching Decatur, went into bivouac. The provision trains aim now to keep one day's march in advance of the army.

Source: Alexander G. Downing, Edited by Olynthus B., Clark, Downing’s Civil War Diary, p. 169

Diary of Corporal Charles H. Lynch: June 13, 1864

A hot morning. All is quiet. Gave my clothes a good washing, hanging them on the bushes to dry. A good swim and bath while waiting for them to dry. Dry quickly in this climate. No change of raiment, only one suit, we are in light marching order. A soldier's life in the field is not always one of cleanliness, marching in the dust and dirt, wading brooks and rivers, sleeping on the ground.

Orders from the Colonel. I have been made a corporal, for bravery on the battlefield of Piedmont, June 5th, 1864. So the orders read. I donned my chevrons for the honorable posish, 4th corporal, Company C, 18th Regiment, Connecticut Volunteers, at Lexington, Virginia, June 13th, 1864.

Marching orders received. We leave here tomorrow morning.

SOURCE: Charles H. Lynch, The Civil War Diary, 1862-1865, of Charles H. Lynch 18th Conn. Vol's, p. 75-6

Diary of Luman Harris Tenney: February 15, 1862

A cold rainy day. Some snow towards night. Spent the evening at the tent. Played checkers and read. Boys played euchre.

SOURCE: Frances Andrews Tenney, War Diary Of Luman Harris Tenney, p. 7

70th Indiana Infantry

Organized at Indianapolis, Ind., July 22 to August 8, 1862. Left State for Louisville, Ky., August 13. Attached to District of Louisville, Ky., Dept. of the Ohio, to November, 1862. Ward's Brigade, Dumont's 12th Division, Army of the Cumberland, to December, 1862. Ward's Brigade, Post of Gallatin, Tenn., Dept. of the Cumberland, to June, 1863. 2nd Brigade, 3rd Division Reserve Corps, Dept. of the Cumberland, to October, 1863. Ward's Brigade, Post and District of Nashville, Tenn., Dept. of the Cumberland, to January, 1864. 1st Brigade, 1st Division, 11th Army Corps, Army of the Cumberland, to April, 1864. 1st Brigade, 3rd Division, 20th Army Corps, Army of the Cumberland, to June, 1865.

SERVICE.--Moved from Louisville, Ky., to Bowling Green, Ky., August, 1862. Duty there and along line of the Louisville & Nashville Railroad till November. Skirmishes at Russellsville and Glasgow September 30. Moved to Scottsville November 10, thence to Gallatin, Tenn., November 24, and duty along Louisville & Nashville Railroad from Gallatin to Nashville, Tenn., till February 9, 1863. Garrison duty at Gallatin till June 1. Moved to Lavergne June 1, thence to Murfreesboro, Tenn., June 30. Duty at Fortress Rosecrans, Murfreesboro, till August 19. Moved to Nashville, Tenn., August 19, and picket and fatigue duty at that point till February 24, 1864. Skirmish at Tullahoma, Tenn., October 23, 1863. March to Wauhatchie, Tenn., February 24-March 10. Atlanta (Ga.) Campaign May 1-September 8. Demonstrations on Rocky Faced Ridge May 8-11. Battle of Resaca May 14-15. Near Cassville May 19-24. Combat at New Hope Church May 25. Operations on line of Pumpkin Vine Creek and battles about Dallas, New Hope Church and Allatoona Hills May 25-June 5. Operations about Marietta and against Kenesaw Mountain June 10-July 2. Pine Mountain June 11-14. Lost Mountain June 15-17. Gilgal or Golgotha Church June 15. Muddy Creek June 17. Noyes Creek June 19. Kolb's Farm June 22. Assault on Kenesaw June 27. Ruff's or Neal Dow Station, Smyrna Camp Ground, July 4. Chattahoochie River July 5-17. Peach Tree Creek July 19-20. Siege of Atlanta July 22-August 25. Operations at Chattahoochie River Bridge August 26-September 2. Occupation of Atlanta September 2-November 15. Near Turner's and Howell's Ferries, Chattahoochie River, October 19 (Detachment). March to the sea November 15-December 10. Siege of Savannah December 10-21. Campaign of the Carolinas January to April, 1865. Lawtonville, S.C., February 2. Taylor's Hole Creek, Averysboro, N. C., March 16. Battle of Bentonville March 19-21. Occupation of Goldsboro March 24. Advance on Raleigh April 10-14. Occupation of Raleigh April 14. Bennett's House April 26. Surrender of Johnston and his army. March to Washington, D.C., via Richmond, Va., April 29-May 19. Grand Review May 24. Mustered out June 8, 1865. Recruits transferred to 33rd Indiana Infantry.

Regiment lost during service 2 Officers and 96 Enlisted men killed and mortally wounded and 2 Officers and 103 Enlisted men by disease. Total 203.

SOURCE: Frederick H. Dyer, A Compendium of the War of the 3, p. Rebellion, Part 1145

Diary of Reverend James Freeman Clarke: Sunday, January 4, 1863

Preach New Year's sermon on the proclamation. Afternoon, Lord's Supper. Leave for Washington at 11.10.

SOURCE: Edwin Everett Hale, Editor, James Freeman Clarke: Autobiography, Diary and Correspondence, p. 285

Diary of Reverend James Freeman Clarke: January 7, 1863

Tom, Lilian and I leave [Philadelphia] for Washington at 11.35.

SOURCE: Edwin Everett Hale, Editor, James Freeman Clarke: Autobiography, Diary and Correspondence, p. 285

Diary of Reverend James Freeman Clarke: January 8, 1863

To the Capitol; President's levee. Call on Mr. Sam. Hooper, dine with Judge Thomas.¹

_______________

¹ Hon. Benjamin F. Thomas, then member of Congress for Mr. Clarke's district.

SOURCE: Edwin Everett Hale, Editor, James Freeman Clarke: Autobiography, Diary and Correspondence, p. 285

Diary of Reverend James Freeman Clarke: January 11, 1863

Preach in the Senate Chamber; good congregation. Lilian and I drive with Mrs. S. Hooper to the contraband camp. Dine at Mr. Hooper's with Mr. Sumner and Captain Bliss.

SOURCE: Edwin Everett Hale, Editor, James Freeman Clarke: Autobiography, Diary and Correspondence, p. 285

Diary of Reverend James Freeman Clarke: January 12, 1863

Smithsonian; Sanitary; Capitol; Senate, House, and Library; Long Bridge.

SOURCE: Edwin Everett Hale, Editor, James Freeman Clarke: Autobiography, Diary and Correspondence, p. 285

Diary of Reverend James Freeman Clarke: January 13, 1863

Carriage with Henry Huidekoper and Colonel and Mrs. Ashurst to Arlington Heights, and to Colonel Wells' camp at Alexandria.

SOURCE: Edwin Everett Hale, Editor, James Freeman Clarke: Autobiography, Diary and Correspondence, p. 285

Wilder Dwight to Elizabeth White Dwight, July 9, 1861

Tuesday Morning, July 9.

Dear Mother, — I suppose you will be glad to hear that we came out of the furnace like gold. Everything has gone well. I feel better than before starting, and the regiment, as soon as it got on board ship, found itself cool and well. We are off this afternoon. Good by. God bless you.

SOURCE: Elizabeth Amelia Dwight, Editor, Life and Letters of Wilder Dwight: Lieut.-Col. Second Mass. Inf. Vols., p. 45

Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. to John Lothrop Motley, April 29, 1860

Boston, April 29, 1860.

It was so pleasant, my dear Lothrop, to get a letter from you. I have kept it a week or two so as to have something more to tell you, yet I fear it will not be much after all. Yesterday the Saturday Club had its meeting. I carried your letter in my pocket, not to show to anybody, but to read a sentence or two which I knew would interest them all, and especially your kind message of remembrance. All were delighted with it; and on my proposing your health, all of them would rise and drink it standing. We then, at my suggestion, gave three times three in silence, on account of the public character of the place and the gravity and position of the high assisting personages. Be assured that you were heartily and affectionately, not to say proudly, remembered. Your honors are our honors, and when we heard you had received that superior tribute, which stamps any foreigner's reputation as planetary, at the hands of the French Institute, it was as if each of us had had a ribbon tied in his own buttonhole. I hoped very much to pick up something which might interest you from some of our friends who know more of the political movements of the season than I do.

I vote with the Republican party. I cannot hesitate between them and the Democrats. Yet what the Republican party is now doing it would puzzle me to tell you. What its prospects are for the next campaign, perhaps I ought to know, but I do not. I am struck with the fact that we talk very little politics of late at the club. Whether or not it is disgust at the aspect of the present political parties, and especially at the people who represent them, I cannot say; but the subject seems to have been dropped for the present in such society as I move about in, and especially in the club. We discuss first principles, enunciate axioms, tell stories, make our harmless jokes, reveal ourselves in confidence to our next neighbors after the Chateau Margaux has reached the emotional center, and enjoy ourselves mightily. But we do not talk politics. After the President's campaign is begun, it is very likely that we may, and then I shall have something more to say about Mr. Seward and his prospects than I have now.

How much pleasure your praise gave me I hardly dare to say. I know that I can trust it. You would not bestow it unless you liked what I had done, but you would like the same thing better if I had done it than coming from a stranger. That is right and kind and good, and notwithstanding you said so many things to please me, there were none too many. I love praise too well always, and I have had a surfeit of some forms of it. Yours is of the kind that is treasured and remembered. I have written in every number of the “Atlantic” since it began. I should think myself industrious if I did not remember the labors you have gone through, which simply astonish me. What delight it would be to have you back here in our own circle of men — I think we can truly say, whom you would find worthy companions: Agassiz, organizing the science of a hemisphere; Longfellow, writing its songs; Lowell, than whom a larger, fresher, nobler, and more fertile nature does not move among us; Emerson, with his strange, familiar remoteness of character, I do not know what else to call it; and Hawthorne and Dana, when he gets back from his voyage round the world, and all the rest of us thrown in gratis. But you must not stay too long; if all the blood gets out of your veins, I am afraid you will transfer your allegiance.

I am just going to Cambridge to an “exhibition,” in which Oliver Wendell Holmes speaks a translation (expectatur versio in lingua vernacula), the Apology for Socrates; Master O. W. Holmes, Jun., being now a tall youth, almost six feet high, and lover of Plato and of art.

I ought to have said something about your grand new book, but I have not had time to do more than read some passages from it. My impression is that of all your critics, that you have given us one of the noble historical pictures of our time, instinct with life and glowing with the light of a poetical imagination, which by itself would give pleasure, but which, shed over a great epoch in the records of our race, is at once brilliant and permanent. In the midst of so much that renders the very existence of a civilization amongst us problematical to the scholars of the Old World, it is a great pleasure to have the cause of letters so represented by one of our own countrymen, citizens, friends. Your honors belong to us all, but most to those who have watched your upward course from the first, who have shared many of the influences which have formed your own mind and character, and who now regard you as the plenipotentiary of the true Republic accredited to every court in Europe.

SOURCE: George William Curtis, editor, The Correspondence of John Lothrop Motley in Two Volumes, Library Edition, Volume 2, p. 87-90

Charles Eliot Norton to George William Curtis, August 24, 1861

Newport, 24 August, 1861.

. . . I do not agree with you that the war is likely to be short. Its issue may soon become certain, but it will be long before we can lay down our arms. Nor am I ready yet to share in any gloomy prognostications. I believe the people will save the country and the government in spite of all the weakness and mismanagement and corruption at Washington. Nor am I afraid of the effect of another defeat, — if another should come. It will indeed bring to the surface an immense show of cowardice, and meanness; but we have no right yet to believe that the temper of our people is so low that it will not rise with the trial and [sic] of calamity. I bate nothing of heart or hope, and I grieve to think that you should ever feel out of heart or despondent. We have not yet more than begun to rouse ourselves; we are just bracing to the work; but we are setting to it at last in earnest.

The practical matter to be attended to at this moment seems to me to be the change in the Cabinet. A change must be made, — and it will be made, if not by the pressure now brought to bear, then by a popular revolution. We shall have public meetings of a kind to enforce their resolves in the course of a few days, if Cameron, Welles and Smith are not removed, or the best reason given for retaining them. Mr. Seward ought to understand that it is not safe for him that they should any longer remain in the Cabinet. If another reverse were to come and they still there, the whole Cabinet would have to go; — and then let Mr. Lincoln himself look out for a Committee of Safety. . . .

Let me hear from you again soon, — and above all do not begin to doubt our final success.

If the fortunes of war go against us, if all our domestic scoundrels give aid to the cause of the rebels, — we still shall not fail, and the issue will be even better than our hopes.

Most affectionately

Yours,

Charles E. N.

SOURCE: Sara Norton and  M. A. DeWolfe Howe, Letters of Charles Eliot Norton, Volume 1, p. 241-2

John M. Forbes to Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe, August 21, 1861

Naushon, August 21,1861.

My Dear Doctor, — I have yours of the 19th. I confess to being one of that average class which constitutes the majority of our people, who as yet hesitate at the dreadful experiment of insurrection; if it comes as a necessity, an alternative to the subversion of republican institutions, we should not hesitate a moment. There seem to me three reasons against it at this time, apart from our natural shrinking from a measure of this sort upon humane grounds.

1st. It may unite the border States against us, and check any tendency to division in the cotton States.

2d. It will, if resorted to from anything but obvious, stern necessity, divide the North.

3d. Its success as a weapon against the South is by no means certain. It is, to my mind, — with the light of the past four months' quiet among the blacks, and of John Brown's experience, — very uncertain unless resorted to under favorable circumstances. At present it seems to me worth more as a weapon to hold in reserve to threaten with, than one to strike with.

If resorted to now it would be in a hesitating, uncertain manner by our administration, and from that, if nothing else, would be likely to fail. Once tried, and failed in, a great source of terror to the South and of confidence to the North is lost.

I go therefore for holding it in reserve until public sentiment, which is the chief motive power behind the administration, drives them to use it decisively. Our people throughout have been ahead of our government, which has followed rather laggingly: — it is not a leading, but a following administration. It does not act, even now, readily when first urged by the popular tide. Nothing but the full force of the current starts it. If we could get a good hurricane to help the tide, it might sweep away some of the weaker materials in the Cabinet, and possibly put a leader in their place who would thenceforward draw after him the Cabinet and the people.

Your suggestion, then, even if it were the best thing, seems to me premature. As to urging on the government to vigor, to making serious war with shot and hemp, there would not, there could not, be two opinions with the people. Governor Andrew could give the hint to our Massachusetts papers, and they would all readily sound the trumpet for vigor and for discipline, and the “Evening Post” and such papers would readily help.

As to anything more, or in the direction you suggest, I want to see the demand come from the people, from the democracy, rather than from either the leaders or the abolitionists!

Perhaps the poverty of the South may soon begin to afflict the slaves, and they may lead off. If they do, the responsibility is not ours.

Very truly yours,

John M. Forbes.

SOURCE: Sarah Forbes Hughes, Letters and Recollections of John Murray Forbes, Volume 1, p. 239-40

George William Curtis to Charles Eliot Norton, December 28, 1862

December 28, '62.

This will be a crucial week. The counter proclamation, the edict of emancipation, the opposition of Seymour & Co., and the mad desperation of the reaction, — all will not avail. The war must proceed, and to its natural result. Even Joseph Harper, the most Southern of the firm, said to me yesterday, “The negroes must be armed, and if Seymour does not support the war he will have no support.” Perhaps, if any possible way of settlement could be devised, there might be a strong party for it, but in deep water we must swim or drown. All our reverses, our despondence, our despairs, bring us to the inevitable issue: shall not the blacks strike for their freedom?

SOURCE: Edward Cary, George William Curtis, p. 161