Sept 15 - Read papers and wrote letters. Distributed testaments in Illinois battery - well received. A private there had been a city missionary in Chicago. At Missouri hospital. Toward evening weary, but spirited a little and nervous. Anti-Vallandigham* resolutions largely signed in regiment.
Sept 16 - A little cloudy, quite a relief. Fine display of the brigade and cavalry out on inspection. Felt weary toward evening and somewhat dis-spirited and lonely but the prayer meeting did me good. Feel my work is great but must cast my care on the Lord. Feel want of family intercourse and society.
Sept 17 - Rain, clouds and cool wind. Beginning to feel the monotony of camp life. Read in "Chaplain's manual" useful instructions on dealing with sick and well. Eve to prayer meeting of 32nd Missouri. Not as interesting as ours I think. Burnside* has marched on a hoodless conquest and deliverance of E. Tennessee. Appetite less voracious.
Sept 18 - Chilly day. Rode to town on my little horse. Liked him and did not like him. The horse question has troubled me much for ten days. Rosencrans has taken Chattanooga and Burnside.
Sept 19 - Chilly still. Lib. our cook sick and Jim cooks. Studied etc. P.m. to 32nd hosp[ital]. Shall alternate daily between that and ours. Gave tracts and papers. Eve talked with Col Herrick of bringing wife and friends south in winter.
Sept 20 - Fine day. An unexpected and delightful tho' short call from Sam who has a furlough of 20 days. He is well. His regiment has suffered and is suffering much from sickness and death. In p.m. preached to an unusually good number of soldiers. Col Herrick has talked to officers about attending church. Very bad sick head ache in eve.
Sept 21 - Fine day. A.m. to Chaplain's meeting etc. P.m. school. My school room does well. Six or eight in attendance. In eve spent an hour or two with Col. Swayne who is quite sick. Prayer with him. Good letter from Ella and Henry.
* Clement Laird Vallandigham was born 29 July 1820 in Lisbon Ohio. He was elected as a Democrat to the Ohio legislature in 1845 and 1846, and by a very small margin to the U.S. Congress in 1858 and 1860 representing the district around Dayton. When the war broke out the majority anti-secession population of Dayton turned him out of office by a large margin in 1862.
He was a member of the copperhead movement and was vociferously anti-war on the basis of states rights, and perhaps racism played a part as well, as he defended the institution of slavery.
After the war, Vallandigham returned to Ohio, lost his campaigns for Senate and the House of Representatives on an anti-Reconstruction platform, and then resumed his law practice. By 1871 he won the Ohio Democrats over to a "
new departure" policy that would essentially neglect to mention the Civil War.
Vallandigham's assertion that "he did not want to belong to the United States" prompted Edward Everett Hale to write
The Man Without a Country. This short story, which appeared in
The Atlantic Monthly in December 1863, was widely republished.
Vallandigham died on 17 June 1871 in
Lebanon, Ohio, at the age of 50, after accidentally shooting himself with a pistol. He was representing a defendant in a murder case for killing a man in a bar room brawl. Vallandigham attempted to prove the victim had in fact killed himself while trying to draw his pistol from a pocket when rising from a kneeling position. As Vallandigham conferred with fellow defense attorneys in his hotel room, he showed them how he would demonstrate this to the jury. Grabbing a pistol he believed to be unloaded, he put it in his pocket and enacted the events as they might have happened, shooting himself in the process. Vallandigham proved his point, and the defendant, Thomas McGehan, was acquitted and released from custody. Pictured below
Union General Ambrose Everett Burnside was born 23 May 1824 in Liberty Indiana. He attended West Point, graduating in 1847. He fought in the Mexican-American war doing mostly garrison duty in Mexico City near the end of the war. At the close of the war, Lt. Burnside served two years on the western frontier, serving under Captain Braxton Bragg in the 3rd U.S. Artillery, a light artillery unit that had been converted to cavalry duty, protecting the Western mail routes through Nevada to California. In 1849, he was wounded by an arrow in his neck during a skirmish against Apaches in Las Vegas, New Mexico.
At the outbreak of the Civil War, Burnside was a
brigadier general in the Rhode Island Militia. He raised a regiment, the
1st Rhode Island Volunteer Infantry, and was appointed its
colonel on May 2, 1861. Within a month, he ascended to brigade command in the Department of Northeast Virginia. He commanded the brigade without distinction at the
First Battle of Bull Run in July, committing his troops piecemeal, and took over division command temporarily for wounded
Brig. Gen. David Hunter. After his 90-day regiment was mustered out of service, he was promoted to brigadier general of volunteers on August 6, and was assigned to train provisional brigades in the nascent
Army of the Potomac.
General Burnside also fought in North Carolina, Antietam, Fredericksburg, East Tennessee, The Overland campaign and the Crater.
Burnside was relieved of command on August 14 and sent on leave by Grant; Meade never recalled him to duty. A court of inquiry later placed the blame for the Crater fiasco on Burnside and his subordinates. In December, Burnside met with President Lincoln and General Grant about his future. He was contemplating resignation, but Lincoln and Grant requested that he remain in the Army. At the end of the interview, Burnside wrote, "I was not informed of any duty upon which I am to be placed." He finally resigned his commission on April 15, 1865.
Burnside was noted for his unusual
facial hair, joining strips of hair in front of his ears to his mustache but with chin clean-shaven; the word
burnsides was coined to describe this style. The syllables were later reversed to give
sideburns.
