6. A lot of rebel papers, dated January 31st, have been brought in. They contain many extracts clipped from the Northern Democratic press, and the Southern soul is jubilant over the fact that a large party in Ohio and Indiana denounce President Lincoln. The rebels infer from this that the war must end soon, and the independence of the Southern States be acknowledged. Our friends at home should not give aid and comfort to the enemy. They may excite hopes which, in time, they will themselves be compelled to help crush.
7. Few of the men who started home when I did have returned. The General is becoming excited on the subject of absentees. From General Thomas' corps alone there are sixteen thousand men absent, sick, pretending to be sick, or otherwise. Of my brigade there are sixteen hundred men present for duty, and over thirteen hundred absent—nearly one-half away. The condition of other brigades is similar. If a man once gets away, either into hospital or on detached duty, it is almost impossible to get him back again to his regiment. A false excuse, backed up by the false statement of a family physician, has hitherto been accepted; but hereafter, I am told, it will not be. Uncle Sam can not much longer stand the drain upon his finances which these malingerers occasion, and his reputation suffers also, for he can not do with fifty thousand men what it requires one hundred thousand to accomplish.
People may say Rosecrans had at the battle of Murfreesboro nearly one hundred regiments. A regiment should contain a thousand men; in a hundred regiments, therefore, there should have been one hundred thousand men. With this force he should have swallowed Bragg; but they must understand that the largest of these regiments did not contain over five hundred men fit for duty, and very many not over three hundred. The men in hospital, the skulkers at home, and the skedaddlers here, count only on the muster and pay-rolls; our friends at home should remember, therefore, that when they take a soldier by the hand who should be with his regiment, and say to him, "Poor fellow, you have seen hard times enough, stay a little longer, the army will not miss you," that some other poor fellow, too brave and manly to shirk, shivers through the long winter hours at his own post, and then through other long hours at the post of the absentee, thus doing double duty; and they should bear in mind, also, that in battle this same poor fellow has to fight for two, and that battles are lost, the war prolonged, and the National arms often disgraced, by reason of the absence of the men whom they encourage to remain at home a day or two longer. If every Northern soldier able to do duty would do it, Rosecrans could sweep to Mobile in ninety days; but with this skeleton of an army, we rest in doubt and idleness. There is a screw loose somewhere.
10. Fortifications are being constructed. My men are working on them.
Just now I heard the whistle of a locomotive, on the opposite side of the river. This is the first intimation we have had of the completion of the road to this point. The bridge will be finished in a day or two, and then the trains will arrive and depart from Murfreesboro regularly.
11. Called at Colonel Wilder's quarters, and while there met General J. J. Reynolds. He made a brief allusion to the Stalnaker times. On my return to camp, I stopped for a few minutes at Department head-quarters to see Garfield. General Rosecrans came into the room; but, as I was dressed in citizens' clothes, did not at first recognize me. Garfield said: "General Rosecrans, Colonel Beatty." The General took me by the hand, turned my face to the light, and said he did not have a fair view of me before. "Well," he continued, "you are a general now, are you?" I told him I was not sure yet, and he said: "Is it uncertainty or modesty that makes you doubt?" "Uncertainty." "Well," he replied, "you and Sam Beatty have both been recommended. I guess it will be all right." He invited me to remain for supper, but I declined.
16. To-day I rode over the battle-field, starting at the river and following the enemy's line off to their left, then crossing over on to the right of our line, and following it to the left. For miles through the woods evidences of the terrible conflict meet one at every step. Trees peppered with bullet and buckshot, and now and then one cut down by cannon ball; unexploded shell, solid shot, dead horses, broken caissons, haversacks, old shoes, hats, fragments of muskets, and unused cartridges, are to be seen every-where. In an open space in the oak woods is a long strip of fresh earth, in which forty-one sticks are standing, with intervals between them of perhaps a foot. Here forty-one poor fellows lie under the fresh earth, with nothing but the forty-one little sticks above to mark the spot. Just beyond this are twenty-five sticks, to indicate the last resting-place of twenty-five brave men; and so we found these graves in the woods, meadows, corn-fields, cotton-fields, every-where. We stumbled on one grave in a solitary spot in the thick cedars, where the sunshine never penetrates. At the head of the little mound of fresh earth a round stick was standing, and on the top of this was an old felt hat; the hat still doing duty over the head, if not on the head, of the dead soldier who lay there. The rain and sun and growing vegetation of one summer will render it impossible to find these graves. The grass will cover the fresh earth, the sticks will either rot or become displaced, and then there will be nothing to indicate that—
| "Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid |
| Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire; |
| Hands that the rod of empire might have swayed, |
| Or waked to ecstasy the living lyre." |
17. The army is turning its attention to politics somewhat. Generals and colonels are ventilating their opinions through the press. I think their letters may have good effect upon the people at home, and prevent them from discouraging the army and crippling the Administration. Surely the effort now being put forth by a great party in the North to convince the troops in the field that this is an unjust war, an abolition or nigger war, must have a tendency to injure the army, and, if persisted in, may finally ruin it.
19. Work on the fortifications still continues. This is to be a depot of supplies, and there are provisions enough already here to subsist the army for a month. Now that the Cumberland is high, and the railroads in running order, any amount of supplies may be brought through.