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Page 5
Herded into a car by ourselves, we conscripts, substitutes, and the
rest, through the greater part of the day, swept over the fertile
meadows along the banks of the White River and the Connecticut, through
pleasant scenes that had little of delight for us. At Woodstock we were
joined by the conscripts from the 1st District,--altogether an inferior
company from those before with us, who were honest yeomen from the
northern and mountainous towns, while these were many of them
substitutes from the cities.
At Brattleboro we were marched up to the camp; our knapsacks and persons
searched; and any articles of citizen's dress taken from us; and then
shut up in a rough board building under a guard. Here the prospect was
dreary, and I felt some lack of confidence in our Father's arm, though
but two days before I wrote to my dear friend, E.M.H.,--
I go tomorrow where the din
Of war is in the sulphurous air.
I go the Prince of Peace to serve,
His cross of suffering to bear.
Brattleboro, _26th_, _8th_ month, 1863.--Twenty-five or thirty caged
lions roam lazily to and fro through this building hour after hour
through the day. On every side without, sentries pace their slow beat,
bearing loaded muskets. Men are ranging through the grounds or hanging
in synods about the doors of the different buildings, apparently without
a purpose. Aimless is military life, except betimes its aim is deadly.
Idle life blends with violent death-struggles till the man is unmade a
man; and henceforth there is little of manhood about him. Of a man he is
made a soldier, which is a man-destroying machine in two senses,--a
thing for the prosecuting or repelling an invasion like the block of
stone in the fortress or the plate of iron on the side of the Monitor.
They are alike. I have tried in vain to define a difference, and I see
only this. The iron-clad with its gun is the bigger soldier: the more
formidable in attack, the less liable to destruction in a given time;
the block the most capable of resistance; both are equally obedient to
officers. Or the more perfect is the soldier, the more nearly he
approaches these in this respect.
Three times a day we are marched out to the mess houses for our rations.
In our hands we carry a tin plate, whereon we bring back a piece of
bread (sour and tough most likely), and a cup. Morning and noon a piece
of meat, antique betimes, bears company with the bread. They who wish it
receive in their cups two sorts of decoctions: in the morning burnt
bread, or peas perhaps, steeped in water with some saccharine substance
added (I dare not affirm it to be sugar). At night steeped tea extended
by some other herbs probably and its pungency and acridity assuaged by
the saccharine principle aforementioned. On this we have so far
subsisted and, save some nauseating, comfortably. As we go out and
return, on right and left and in front and rear go bayonets. Some
substitutes heretofore have escaped and we are not to be neglected in
our attendants. Hard beds are healthy, but I query cannot the result be
defeated by the _degree_? Our mattresses are boards. Only the slight
elasticity of our thin blankets breaks the fall of our flesh and bones
thereon. Oh! now I praise the discipline I have received from uncarpeted
floors through warm summer nights of my boyhood.
The building resounds with petty talk; jokes and laughter and swearing.
Something more than that. Many of the caged lions are engaged with
cards, and money changes hands freely. Some of the caged lions read, and
some sleep, and so the weary day goes by.
L.M.M. and I addressed the following letter to Governor Holbrook and
hired a corporal to forward it to him.
BRATTLEBORO, VT., _26th_, _8th_ month, 1863.
FREDERICK HOLBROOK,
Governor of Vermont:--
We, the undersigned members of the Society of Friends, beg leave to
represent to thee, that we were lately drafted in the 3d Dist. of
Vermont, have been forced into the army and reached the camp near this
town yesterday.
That in the language of the elders of our New York Yearly Meeting, "We
love our country and acknowledge with gratitude to our Heavenly Father
the many blessings we have been favoured with under the government; and
can feel no sympathy with any who seek its overthrow."
But that, true to well-known principles of our Society, we cannot
violate our religious convictions either by complying with military
requisitions or by the equivalents of this compliance,--the furnishing
of a substitute or payment of commutation money. That, therefore, we are
brought into suffering and exposed to insult and contempt from those who
have us in charge, as well as to the penalties of insubordination,
though liberty of conscience is granted us by the Constitution of
Vermont as well as that of the United States.
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