Continuing a series on the Civil War in New Kent with reports to the The Daily Green Mountain Freeman from their correspondent in the Vermont Brigade during the Peninsula campaign of 1862. In this letter our correspondent continues his adoration of "Little Mac," and denounces the "cruelty and barbarity" . . . of those who he has traveled half the country to kill.
(Language warning)
(Our War Correspondence)
From the Fifth Vermont RegimentCamp at White House Farm, Va,
May 17th, 1862.
Mr. Willard: We have been in this camp since the forenoon of the 14th inst., and troops are concentrating here all the time. Transportation has been greatly impeded by the long rain storm, making the roads almost impassable. I learned yesterday that the roads between this camp and our last one, at Cumberland, are filled with our wagons fast in the mud. But slowly thy keep coming up, and should say that now we have at least sixty thousand men at this camp- all on one level, open field, the east side being skirted by the river with its raking musts and smoking chimneys. Near the northeast comer is the White House, a very respectable, but not costly or fancy residence. Its yard and garden grounds are extensive, unique, and very pleasant, just the place to satiate the extravagant home feelings of the most princely American.
Upon these grounds Little Mac ins pitched his tents, and himself and staff are evidently quite at home in their shade and clover. Though strictly guarded, the premises are constantly surrounded by thousands of anxious soldiers,- anxious for what? Why, more to see their General than this deserted homestead of the arch traitor, for we all love him, and it is a satisfaction that no soldier can express to belong to this army, to share their trials and sufferings with one they so much honor and esteem. Yea, I have told you this before. Nothing can shake our confidence in that man, for it in absolute, like the faith of the Christian mother in her God.
But now, on we go. It is only eight o'clock, and at twelve we march again, -that is, this division, and for aught I know, others. But I think the order is for this division only, us we have all the time been pushed in advance, and shall be until somebody's appointment as a Brigadier General is confirmed; at least, that is what we all think. But no matter; if we are to fight so as to kill two birds with one stone, so much the better. Yet, it may cost us a little more blood to do this "heavy and perilous work."(1) We have a fierce, bitter and desperate foe before us, and from many specimens that I have seen of their rank and file, as also of their officers, and from the further evidence before us of their cruelty and barbarity, it is hard, very hard indeed, to persuade myself that these men were ever amenable to the influences of Christianity. God knows I pity them, and while we fight them as enemies, and day by day become more familiar with their folly, perverseness and crime, our shame for them as countrymen is augmented. But, as I have just told you, we are to proceed on, -onward to Richmond, and should it be my good fortune to live to pass this equator of Rebeldom, I expect to see enough more of treason and its blind adoration to enable me to finish this partial exordium of my hate.
What is to be the character of our march from this point, cannot be known. Ayers' battery has just gone on gunboats. Our order is to march at noon with two days' rations, but as a remark, apt and spicy, and too good to be lost, amid not contraband, I think, I must inform you that my friend, Maj. Joyce, says "very man is to be put in a runner case and floated up the river." Not bad; we are short of transportation, and the idea, impromptu and original is not much behind Gen. Mitchells cotton bale bridge(2). By the way, this reminds me of an other good thing on a Washington County officer. and when you are short for "copy,' just ask, in a mild but not exactly leading manner, Capt. Randall about his novel mule trade, and he will sell you something rich. I once owned a mule myself, and can in a measure sympathize with the Captain when his transaction, like my own, comes to be a standing joke. Don't be afraid; the Captain is the best natured man in the world, and in self-defence(sic), will give you at least "a plain, unvarnished title."
For a wonder, we have not seen a wood-tick since we have been in this camp. Yet it is no wonder either, for we are fully a quarter of a mile from timber. But we have the marks of our old friends still about us, in the shape of blotches and sears, and to make a clean breast of it, we are just about as well tick, flea and bug bitten, dirty, ragged and cross as we can he and still be in a condition to make a good fight. Soldiers must have something ail them besides hunger, or they would be of little account. I said hunger, for I can think of nothing else that plagues us more. Yet we have enough to eat, such as it is; at the same time we can't call it nourishment; it is simply subsistence. And just as I feel now, though I am not hungry, and do not expect to die just yet, I would freely give five dollars, if I had it, for the measure of good bread and milk that I could "mow away." That may look a little extravagant in your " price current," but the late sutler tariff has used us soldiers to such extravagance. "Uncle Ira" says, "he saw a nigger this milking milking a cow, and he had a mind to run up and knock him over and take the milk; and there are many soldiers here who would not have showed a good revolution in that way, they would have knocked him over.
But I am writing more than I intended to, and taking time that I should be giving to preparations for the march, Richmond! Richmond, the great Babel of rebellion, is all we think about. Shall we ever get there? I hope so, and if we do, your correspondent will have something besides a dearth of news for his letters. What a field will then he open for the rivalship of scribblers. Somebody will "spill" in attempts at sensation. Artemas (3) will be there to tell his tale and open his show, exhibiting to the astonished natives "wax works" of their forefathers, and the Dixie mummies of their descendants. And can't Greeley, or some one else, be there to read Othello's tale, of "men whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders, the anthropophagi,"(4) and other monsters that picture best his horror and his hate? Certainly we can. Well, well see by-and-by. We may be weeks on the road, -the 2d Vermont has been a year already,- but some of us will get there, or the war will not, as predicted, he speedily closed.
Yours, &c , See See Ess.
-The Daily Green Mountain Freeman, May 28, 1862
(1) Gen. Ormsby M. Mitchel had recently used a cotton bale pontoon bridge to cross a creek in Tennessee.
(2) In April the "Yorktown Correspondent" of the New York Herald Tribune had written,
"When the advance is made whenever that day be -Gen. Wm. F. Smith's division will be first in all heavy and perilous work. No one in the army enjoys the confidence of Gen. McClellan and his generals more than Gen. Smith."
(3) I assume Artemas Ward,
"Artemus Ward was a persona dreamed up by 23-year-old New Englander and newspaperman Charles Foster Browne (née Brown—he added the e to affect an English air). Browne started out as a humble typesetter but rose to transatlantic fame thanks to this immensely popular alter ego he created to fill out the pages of the Cleveland Plain Dealer."- American University Magazine, March 2015
(4) Othello, (1.3, lines 141-146)
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