August 18. Sunday.–Last night, about ten or eleven, five companies of Colonel Moor’s (Second German Regiment) Twenty-eighth Regiment arrived from Clarksburg under Lieutenant-Colonel Becker. My partner, L. Markbreit, is sergeant-major. This morning, raining hard. Exciting rumors and news. A Tennessee regiment and force coming through the mountains east of Sutton–a battery of four guns, one thirty-two-pounder!! What an anchor to drag through the hills! Absurd! Danger of all provisions below here with vast stores being taken by the enemy. We are ordered to cook three days’ rations and be ready to move at a moment’s warning, with forty rounds of ammunition. All trains on the route to Sutton are ordered back or to take the way to Buchanan [Buckhannon] via Frenchtown. Eighty thousand rations are ordered to same place from here. All is war. I pack my portmanteau and prepare to move. Oh, for a horse which wouldn’t founder, or get lame, or stumble! At night no order to move yet.
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HEADQUARTERS, 23D REG’T, O. V. INF., U. S. A.,
August 17, 1861.
DEAREST:–Your letter to Dr. Joe did me much good. Bless the boys. I love to read your talk about them.
I had just started this letter when a dispatch came from Captain Zimmerman. He had a little brush with some guerrillas in the mountains twenty-five miles from here and had three men wounded. This is the first blood of our regiment shed in fight. He scattered the rascals without difficulty, making some prisoners. We have had a picquet wounded on guard and accidental wounding but no fighting blood-letting before. This is the expedition I expected to go with when I wrote you last, but the accounts of the enemy not justifying the sending of more than one company, I was not sent.
There is a general rising among the Rebels. They rob and murder the Union men, and the latter come to us for help. We meet numbers of most excellent people. We have out all the time from two to six parties of from ten to seventy-five or one hundred men on scouting duty. There are some bloody deeds done in these hills, and not all on one side. We are made happy today by the arrival of Captain McMullen with an excellent company of artillery–four mountain howitzers and complete equipments. They will be exceedingly useful. Lieutenant-Colonel Matthews is nearly one hundred miles south of us with Colonel Tyler and others. The road between here and there is so infested with “bushwhackers” that we have no communication with him except by way of Gallipolis in Ohio. He has been ordered to return here but deems it unsafe to attempt it.
Colonel Scammon has fallen in love with Joe. He says if his qualities were known he would get a high place in the Regular Army medical staff, and brags on him perpetually. We have very few of our own men sick, but numbers in the hospital of other regiments.
My new horse doesn’t turn out any tougher than the other. But Captain McMullen says he has one which I am to try tonight. I shall get a “Webby” that can stand hard work and poor fare one of these days.
How about the pants? If they are reasonably good blue, put a light blue stripe down the outside seam and send them to me when you have a chance. I don’t care about the color. The blue stripe is enough uniform for this latitude. Hard service for duds. I am well supplied–rather too much of most things.
August I8. Sunday P.M.–Since writing the above we have received word that the enemy in force is coming towards us through the mountains to the southeast, and have been ordered to prepare three days’ rations and to be ready to march at a moment’s notice to attack the enemy. I am all ready. My little knapsack contains a flannel shirt, one of those you gave me, two pairs of socks, a pair of drawers, a towel, the what-you-may-call-it you made for me to hold scissors, etc., etc. This is enough. We are to go without tents or cooking utensils. A part of Colonel Moor’s Second German Regiment are to go with us. Markbreit is among them. They reached here last night.
It will be a stirring time if we go, and the result of it all by no means clear. I feel no apprehension–no presentiment of evil, but at any rate you know how I love you and the dear boys and Grandma and all will take care that I am not forgotten. You will know by telegraph long before this reaches you what comes of the anticipated movements. I suspect we are misinformed. At any rate, good-bye, darling. Kisses for all.
Affectionately,
R.
MRS. HAYES.