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 headquarters here 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.
XLVIII
Camp Beaufort,
Charles Co., Md., April 3, 1862.
I HAVE just learned, late at night, that a mail is going out tomorrow morning. It is getting to be very exasperating—these orders to leave, and then having them countermanded. We expected to get off today, and now the announcement is that we are certainly going tomorrow. The transports have been ordered, and temporary piers built to load us from. Captain Bailey has just got along with a batch of recruits. Don’t know yet how many acquaintances I have in the lot.
One of Company E’s men [Luther W. Fassett] was shot by rebel scouts yesterday, on the other side of the river. The company was over there digging up a big gun which the rebels had buried. He was sent back for some shovels, when three rebels stepped into the road and shot him. He had a brother in the same company and a wife and child in New Hampshire.