Westboro Transcript
July 5,
1862
Communications
Marlboro, June
28th, 1862
Ms. Editor; - Having just returned from a visit to Manassas,
now the camp ground of McDowell’s division, with which the 13th
Mass. Reg. is connected, it may be interesting to the friends of our two
companies to know what I saw in camp and Hospital. I am satisfied from what I saw that a
soldier’s life in war is no holiday life.
Those who speak of a soldier’s pay as sufficient compensation for the
service he renders, and the toils and privations he undergoes, had better try a
three years enlistment and then wee what they think. I am more satisfied than ever before, that
the additional pay given by the State to our volunteers was deserved. The only thing that I regret is that it is so
little and so limited in its application.
Additional pay should have been given to every Massachusetts volunteer, though I admit a
distinction between those who have families and the single man would be highly
proper. It is a burning shame for us who
stay at home and enjoy the blessings of civilized life to grudge (?) the
payment a few dollars to those unselfish and patriotic men who have thrown
themselves into the gap and stand bravely between us and the destruction of
everything we hold dear.
When I arrived in camp I found about fifteen thousand men
encamped on the plains of Manassas. They were resting after their severe toils
form long and forced marches, under heavy burdens, with short allowance, and
under great exposure, being a part of the time wholly without tents, storming
as it was. They were now enjoying what
may be termed the bright side of a soldier’s life. It did my hear good to see the general
cheerfulness that pervaded the camps, and I could but wonder how men could be
so cheerful after such hardships, especially as many men were actually
suffering from cramps, rheumatism and fever engendered by their late exposures,
an which exposures were liable to be renewed tomorrow. It is however partially explained by a casual
remark of one of our soldiers, ‘we know not what will turn up to-morrow, and we
have endured so much, we care but little.’
The first twwo days I was in camp and the first night the
weather was delightful, the ground was dry, and there was much comparative
comfort throughout the camp. On the
afternoon of the second day there were unmistakable signs of a Virginia tempest. The soldiers were called out for brigade
drill, but they came back double-quick before five. They were hardly in when the tempest came in
earnest. It was terrific in lightning
and thunder and wind and rain. In three
hours, it is speaking within bounds to say that on a level the water on the
surface of the entire campground would have measured? there than an inch in depth besides what had
soaked into the earth, making the entire surface a complete mush of mud. About nine
o’clock, P. M. some of the officers desired me to go through the
camp that I might tell when I returned to Massachusetts,
what I saw on the plains of Manassas.
I went through the camp of the 13th Mass. Reg. The violence of the tempest had overturned
several of their tents, and all were thoroughly drenched. Their little shelter tents are scarcely
better than no tents. They consist of a
piece of cloth five feet square. When a
man camps by himself, he sets up two stakes, five feet apart and a little over two feet in height, and then places a
ridge-pole, five feet long on the top of these stakes, hangs his piece of cloth
over this ridge-pole, and then pulling the corners as wide apart as he can,
fastens them to the ground by pegs. Thus
he makes himself a little Tom Thumb canvass house, with both gables open. Under his best estate the soldier cannot sit
upright in his tend, but must crawl in on all fours, an dif he happens tot be
over five feet long, either his head or his feet must be our. If he lowers the ridge of his tent he can get
a little more width at the bottom, but this gives him a flatter roof, through
which the rain will run as through a sieve.
But it is not common for one to tent alone. These tents are made so as to button on to
each other – say three agree to button on, as they term it, tow button their
tents together making a length of about ten feet, the third buttons his tend on
to one of the gables and thus they form the best shelter that can possibly be
made with these tents. These tents are
not so good for shelter or for comfort any way as ordinary dog kennels. Yet under such shelters the brave champions
of liberty and right and good government are obliged to crawl. Here were men
coming down with typhoid fevers, rheumatism, dysentery &c. all drenched
through, and obliged to lie there, with the water overflowing the bottom of
their tents, and the rain sifting through the top. God save the country that uses her brave defenders
thus – for I fear men will not. Massachusetts did not
furnish her men thus; this regiment has good Sibley tents that would shelter them
from the storm, but these are packed away somewhere. This regiment had a train of wagons and
ambulances that any regiment might be proud of – but these have all been taken
from them, and there ins not one left to carry a pound of the burdens of the
worn-out soldier, or bear his sick body a mile – but if a man falls by the way,
four of his comrades must bear him along on a piece of canvass, or he must be
left on the way.
All this is said to be done because McDowell has had a
mortal fear of baggage wagons since the battle of Bull Run. When the men crept out in the morning to
rekindle their camp fires and dry themselves and get their breakfasts, they
were a sorry looking act. But they
seemed to put the bright side out, for when I asked them if this did not give
them the rheumatism, they said it did some, and that cramp terribly, but they
added, after we have stirred round awhile and got warm we shall feel all
right. Such treatment of men as this may
be a common concomitant of war, but if it is, war ought not to be an agency
necessary to civilization; but if it is a necessary agency to civilization,
then certainly civilization ought to be willing to offer more than thirteen
dollars a month for meant to meet the dread necessity. I slept in camp, I ate in camp, and I write
what I saw. I believe, to say nothing of
the suffering of the men, that by this one storm, or rather tempest, more property
was lost from the want of proper shelter than would be sufficient to furnish
the entire encampment with proper tents.
The rations of the men were very good in camp, though on their marches
they had suffered much from lack of food.
They said they had often been hungry whilst obliged to guard
the probperty of persons they knew to be secessionists. The universal testimony in regard to the
people saouth where they had been was that there were but few, if any real
Union men there. RThey think it will
take Uncle Sam a long time to coax his obstreperous children back into the old
family circle. I think the sentiment is
gaining ground among the masses of the soldiery that the institution which is
the fundamental cause of all this trouble must be rooted out before this war
can end, thought I must say there was a tenderness, even yet, in some quarters
on this question that I was sorry to see.
Some men see to think that they cannot save the Union and the Constitution without slavery, as
though human slavery was an essential element in the government instituted by
our revolutionary fathers, the apostles of liberty. Such men forget that the framers of the
Constitution intentionally so worded that great instrument as that slavery
might fade out in the country, and yet the Constitution remain intact. IF all our generals came up to the sentiments
which the brave Gen. Rousseau of Kentucky,
lately expressed at a banquet given him at Louisville, this war would soon be
ended. Though a slaveholder, he seems to
be a man for the times. Speaking of
closing this contest, he says, ‘But the negro stands in the way, ins spite of
all that can be done or said. Sanding before
the eye of the secessionist, the negro hides all the blessings of our government,
throwing a black shadow on the sun itself.
IF it had b4een any other species of property that stood in the way, the
army, provoked as it has been, would willingly have seen its quick
destruction.’ ‘Slavery is not worth
our government. It is not worth our
liberty. It is not worth all the
precious blood now poured out for freedom.
It is not worth the free navigation of the Mississippi
River.” Let all Union men
talk in this style, and act as bravely and decidedly as Gen. Rousseau has
acted, and the country is saved; the Union
will stand and liberty will be preserved.
I visited most of the hospitals at Alexandria, and searched out all our Marlboro
boys I could find. Our sick were all doing well. The hospitals were neat and airy, and well
supplied. Yet these neat hospitals are
sad sights to look upon. Each one who
has a friend or relation in the army can imagine all I would say. ‘Here,’ said
an attendant to me, ‘they come in, and hence they go out; and here is one just
going out.’ I looked: a short breath or two, and he was gone. Yet the brave fellows lying there by
thousands, weak and disabled, said with a momentary animation on their
countenances, ‘if we could have pitched into those scoundrels last fall when we
had our full strength, we would have whipped them though we wee raw recruits;
but it is over with many of us now.’ He,
in my view, who endures cheerfully and with fortitude, pains and sickness
engendered by the hardships of war, is not less worthy of respect than he who
meets danger courageously on the battle-field.
I wish to express through our paper, my sincere thanks to
Maj. Gould, Lieuts. Palmer, Pope, and Brown, Dr. Claflin, and Wagoner J. Morse,
and to all our Marlboro boys, for their kind attention to my comfort whilst I
was in camp.
O. W. A.
NOTE: (O.W.A. is O. W. Albee of the town of Marlboro, (perhaps a
selectmen?)).
