XLVII
Camp Beaufort,Charles County, Md.,March 23, 1862.
Camp Beaufort,Charles County, Md.,March 23, 1862.
Camp Beaufort,Charles County, Md.,March 23, 1862.
Camp Beaufort,
Charles County, Md.,March 23, 1862.
NOTa mail has reached us since last Monday. The Government has chartered all the boats within reach for troop transports, and none can be spared for side shows. Two expeditions have passed here this week. Yesterday about thirty large steamers went down the river. These fleets carried parts of Heintzelman’s corps, and have probably gone down below Acquia Creek and landed. We are now a part of this corps, and will probably be the next to move—as soon as the steamers can go back to Washington and coal up.
We will have to make pack-horses of ourselves when we do go. Are to carry sixty extra rounds of ammunition in our knapsacks, and will be equipped with some new-fangled French tent. This tent is in four pieces, each man to carry a piece, and when put up it only makes a screen from the dew and the sun, being open at both ends.
I talked yesterday with a contraband who ran away from the rebels over in Virginia. He says they are fortifying at Fredericksburg, a place about twenty miles from Acquia and about thirty from here. Very likely that is where we will first run into them; and it will probably be a hard place to take, as they have a great many guns in position there and a large force of soldiers.
James O. Adams was here a few days ago. We had a good time together that evening.
Now comes the best joke of the season. Gen. Naglee is very unpopular—thoroughly hated by everybody from highest to lowest. I said so frankly in a letter which Farnsworth published. Then Halifax broke loose. I don’t know how the matter ever got before the War Department at Washington—but it did. And the first thing Farnsworth knew he got a communication from Washington that scared him stiff. He showed it to my folks, and I guess they went wild—expected me to be taken out at sunrise and shot for high treason. The first intimation I got was in a hysterical letter from my mother, that I could hardly understand. Then in a day or two John Kenney came down from the hospital and said Harriet Dame wanted to shake hands with the private soldier that the War Department had to sit up and take notice of. Showing that headquartershere had some orders in relation to me. I don’t know what was in either of the communications, but the folks at home need have no fear of anybody in Hooker’s division being very severely disciplined for voicing the universal sentiment in regard to General Naglee.
9 o’clock in the Evening.—You will not hear from me again for some time, probably, as it is given out that the advancing troops shall not write home. The Chaplain says the 9 o’clock mail tomorrow will be the last one out of here. I have eight letters to write to night, closing up my correspondence for the present.