Chadwick caught up with his regiment only after it was encamped in Washington. He therefore missed its experience passing through Baltimore. A few days earlier, Federal troops changing stations there had been attacked by secessionist mobs. Warned of this danger, Colonel McCalmont issued ammunition and ordered bayonets to be fixed as they made the transfer. No serious incidents occurred.
Washington D.C., Aug. 2, 1861
Dear Father:-
I wrote you when in Harrisburg on my way to rejoin my regiment. I did not overtake them until I came to this place. We are encamped about a half a mile back of the Capitol. We undergo much stricter discipline that we did heretofore. When on guard at night we have orders to shoot down any man who attempts to cross our line without the countersign. We begin to feel the rigor of military discipline. We have good fare compared with the soldiers across the Potomac, still it might be better than it is.
I was through the city a few days since and visited all the public buildings under the guidance of my friend, Buck Brawley. I visited the world-renounced Smithsonian Institute, where are birds, animals, fishes, reptiles and insects of all description and from all parts of the world. Also I was at the Patent Office, the Census Department, in the Senate and heard Andy Johnson of Tennessee make a three-hour Union Speech. I was in the House during a session and heard their deliberations; then to the White House, the War Department, the Navy Department, and finally to the National Observatory where I took a look through a telescope and saw Alexandria away down the Potomac so plain that I could see the American Flag flying over the house where Ellsworth was murdered.[1] I could see the fortifications on Arlington Heights so plain that I could count the cannon on the embankments and see the sentinals pacing their rounds. It would take me a long time to tell what I have seen in this city and all that may be seen around it.
It is thronged with encampments of soldiers; there are thirty or forty thousand troops on this side of the river and more perhaps than that on the other side in sight.
About forty rods from us is the 2nd Minnesota regiment, one of the ones that was in the hottest of the fight at Bull Run. (Which, by-the-way, is only a half-hour’s ride from hereby car.) It is quite interesting to talk with them about the engagement as they are social and intelligent fellows. Their regiment lost about two hundred in killed and missing but they avenged the deaths of their comrades by a terrible slaughter of the Rebels as also did the Fire Zoaves.
The health of all the Rockland boys is good as well as all the rest of the regiment, with a few exceptions of measles.
Tell Mr. Ramsdell I found his brother [Hiram] in the 6th Pennsylvania Regiment under Col. [W. Wallace] Ricketts. His company is the “Tioga Invincibles.”
We suffer much from the excessive heat as it is much hotter here than a few hundred miles further north, from where we started. Is not a dry, parching heat, but a sultry oppressive one.
None of us knows anything about his destination—or about anything else. You know just as much about the war from the daily papers as we do here. The supposition is that Genl. [Winfield] Scott will not make an attack on Manassas again for a month or two, until the leaves fall, so that our troops will not be led on to be slaughtered by the wholesale by the masked batteries, which are planted all around where there is any probability of an attack.[2] Also it is conjectured that heavy batteries will be used against them to throw shell into their fortifications. But it is all conjecture.
We have not yet received our pay from the State of Pennsylvania but I believe we will get it to-day or to-morrow. At least, so it is rumored and I believe the Paymaster is in the camp now.
All letters of soldiers are to be franked by Congress hereafter so that it will cost us nothing for postage.
I suppose none of us will hereafter have the opportunity of going into the city as [Major] Genl. [George B.] McClellan has issued orders that no private or officer be allowed in the streets of the city without a written pass from his Brigadier General.[3] If anyone is found disobeying this order, he is liable to arrest and court martial.
There is no doubt but that we will stay here or in the neighborhood of Washington for some time, so I will get everything that is mailed for me. So now I want to hear from home every week. Don’t be afraid that your letters will not reach me. Suppose I don’t get one of them, it will do no hurt. Just direct to the care of Capt. Ayer or Chaplain Green, 10th Regiment, P. R. C., and I will be sure to get it.
I must close for the present as I must go on duty.
Yours affectionately,
J. D. Chadwick
Next posting: August 8, 2011
Jonathan E. Helmreich
College Historian
Allegheny College
Meadville, PA 16335
[1] Colonel Ephraim Ellsworth (11th New York Fire Zoaves) was the first Union officer to die in the Civil War, shot by tavern keeper James Jackson of the Marshall House in Alexandria, an avid secessionist. Ellsworth had just cut down a Confederate flag flown at the tavern. His assailant was immediately killed.
[2] Scott, noted for his success in commanding the U. S. Army in the Mexican War, was appointed commander-in-chief of the Union Army, despite his advanced age (almost 75 years at the time of his appointment) and physical infirmities.
[3] McClellan was currently commander of the Military Division of the Army of the Potomac and on November 5, 1861, would succeed Scott as commander-in-chief.