The Board holds its sessions in the office of an honorable Mr. Turney, who left on our approach for a more congenial clime, and left suddenly. His letters and papers are lying around us in great confusion and profusion. Among these we have discovered a document bearing the signatures of Jeff. Davis, John Mason, Pierre Soule, and others, pledging themselves to resist, by any and every means, the admission of California, unless it came in with certain boundaries which they prescribed. The document was gotten up in Washington, and Colonel Parkhurst says it is the original contract.
Dined with Colonel D. H. Gilmer, Thirty-eighth Illinois. Dinner splendid; corn, cabbage, beans; peach, apple, and blackberry pie; with buttermilk and sweetmilk. It was a grand dinner, served on a snow-white table-cloth. Where the Colonel obtained all these delicacies I can not imagine. He is an out-and-out Abolitionist, and possibly the negroes had favored him somewhat.
Colonel Gilmer is delighted to find the country coming around to his ideas. He believes the Lord, who superintends the affairs of nations, will give us peace in good time, and that time will be when the institution of slavery has been rooted up and destroyed. He is a Kentuckian by birth, and says he has kinfolks every-where. He is the only man he knows of who can find a cousin in every town he goes to.
9. Dined with Colonel Taylor. Colonels Hobart, Nicholas, and Major Craddock were present. After dinner we adjourned to my quarters, where we spent the afternoon. Hobart dilated upon his adventures at New Orleans and elsewhere, under Abou Ben Butler. He says Butler is a great man, but a d—d scoundrel. I have heard Hobart say something like this at least a thousand times, and am pleased to know that his testimony on this point is always clear, decisive, and uncontradictory.
My visitors are gone. The cars are bunting against each other at the depot. The katydids are piping away on the old, old story. The trees look like great shadows, and unlike the substantial oaks they really are. The camps are dark and quiet. This is all I can say of the night without.
In a little booth made of cedar boughs is a table, on which sputters a solitary tallow candle, in a stick not remarkable for polish. This light illuminates the booth, and reveals to the observer—if there be one, which is very unlikely, for those who usually observe have in all probability retired—a wash basin, a newspaper, a penknife, which originally had two blades, but at present has but one, and that one very dull, a gentleman of say thirty, possibly thirty-five, two steel pens, rusty with age, an inkstand, and one miller, which miller has repeatedly dashed his head against the wick of the candle and discovered that the operation led to unsatisfactory results. Wearied, disappointed, and disheartened, the miller now sits quietly on the table, mourning, doubtless, over the unpleasant lesson which experience has taught him. His head is now wiser; but, alas! his wings are shorter than they were, and of what use is his head without wings? He feels very like the man who made a dash for fame, and fell wounded and bleeding on the field, or the child who, for the first time, discovers that all is not gold that glitters. The gentleman referred to—and I trust it may be no stretch of the verities to call him a gentleman—leans over the table writing. He has an abundant crop of dark hair on his head, under his chin, and on his upper lip. He is not just now troubled with a superabundance of flesh, or, in other words, no one would suspect him of being fat. On the contrary, he might remind one of the lean kine, or the prodigal son who had been feeding on husks. He is wide awake at this late hour of the night, from which I conclude he has slept more or less during the day. No one, to look at this gentleman, would take him to be a remarkable man; in fact, his most intimate friends could not find it in their hearts to bring such an accusation against him. His face is browned by exposure, and his blue eyes look quite dark, or would do so if there were sufficient light to see them. When he straightens up—and he generally straightens when up at all—he is five feet eleven, or thereabouts. His appetite is good, and his education is of that superior kind which enables him, without apparent effort, to misspell three-fourths of the words in the English language; in fact, at this present moment he is holding an imaginary discussion with his wife, who has written him that the underclothing for gentlemen's feet should be spelled s-o-c-k-s, and not "s-o-x". He begs leave to differ with her, which he would probably not dare to do were she not hundreds of miles away; and he argues the matter in this way: S-o-x, o-x, f-o-x—the termination sounds alike in all. Now how absurd it would be to insist that ox should be spelled o-c-k-s, or fox f-o-c-k-s. The commonest kind of sense teaches one that the old lady is in error, and "sox" clearly correct. Much learning hath evidently made her mad. Having satisfied himself about this matter, he takes a photograph from an inside pocket; it is that of his wife. He makes another dive, and brings out one of his children; then he lights a laurel-wood pipe, and, as the white smoke curls about his head and vanishes, his thoughts skip off five hundred miles or less, to a community of sensible, industrious, quiet folks, and when he finally awakes from the reverie and looks about him upon the beggarly surroundings—he does not swear, for he bethinks him in time that swearing would do no good.
10. Colonel Hobart, Twenty-first Wisconsin, and Colonel Hays, Tenth Kentucky, have been added to the Board—the former at my request.
11. To-day I dined with a Wisconsin friend of Colonel Hobart's; had a good dinner, Scotch ale and champagne, and a very agreeable time. Colonel Hegg, the dispenser of hospitalities, is a Norwegian by birth, a Republican, a gentleman who has held important public positions in Wisconsin, and who stands well with the people. In the course of the table talk I learned something of the history of my friend Hobart. He is an old wheel-horse of the Democratic party of his State; was a candidate for governor a few years ago, and held joint debates with Randall and Carl Schurz. He is the father of the Homestead Law, which has been adopted by so many States, and was for many years the leader of the House of Representatives of Wisconsin. All this I gathered from Colonel Hegg, for Hobart seldom, if ever, talks about himself. I imagine that even the most polished orator would obtain but little, if any, advantage over Hobart in a discussion before the people. He has the imagination, the information, and the oratorical fury in discussion which are likely to captivate the masses. He was at one time opposed to arming the negroes; but now that he is satisfied they will fight, he is in favor of using them.
To-night Colonels Hays and Hobart held quite an interesting debate on the policy of arming colored men, and emancipating those belonging to rebels. Hays, who, by the way, is an honest man and a gallant soldier, presented the Kentucky view of the matter, and his arguments, evidently very weak, were thoroughly demolished by Hobart. I think Colonel Hays felt, as the controversy progressed, that his position was untenable, and that his hostility to the President's proclamation sprang from the prejudice in which he had been educated, rather than from reason and justice.
12. Old Tom, known in camp as the veracious nigger, because of a "turkle" story which he tells, is just coming along as I wait a moment for the breakfast bell. The "turkle," which Tom caught in some creek in Alabama, had two hundred and fifty eggs in "him." "Yas, sah, two hunder an' fifty."