"As to the enemy I don't know anything that is definite. We have a
report this evening that they are only twenty-six miles away, but we
have had them right on us so often before, that I hardly believe any
reports we hear about them. But we try to keep prepared, our men sleep
on their arms, and we station our pickets out five or ten miles."
As already noticed, the first payment to our regiment was made in gold
coin, but the second one is noticed from Georgetown as follows: "I sent
you by the Paymaster to be expressed from St. Louis $150 in _Treasury
Notes_. I suppose the Treasury Notes are good, but when you can get
them changed into gold I would do it, to lay by for later use."
This suggests that I had early anticipated the coming depreciation of
Government paper currency, and in later remittances I repeated this
injunction, so that when I retired from the army my wife had as her
savings from my pay a considerable sum in gold, which she converted
into "greenbacks" at the rate of two dollars and fifty cents for one
dollar gold.
In her letters more than once my wife writes of the alarm created among
her neighbors for fear the rebel forces would capture Evansville, our
home. In a letter, October 13, I wrote her:--
"You say in some of your letters that the people were packing up to
leave Evansville when the rebels come. I do not believe they will
ever reach there, but if they should come I would not, if I were you,
leave your home or pack up. Your valuables you might put into a place
of security, but they will not injure peaceable and discreet women at
least."
In a letter of October 15, I report a movement of our brigade to
Otterville:--
"We have come here to go into Major-General Pope's division of
Frémont's army in Davis's brigade. How long we will remain here is
uncertain, but I guess only a few days, when we shall go south in
search of Price.
"The bad weather has made a large number of our men sick, and two or
three hundred were left behind. General Davis put me in charge of them
with orders to get wagons and bring them forward. The sick department
of our army is the most unpleasant, the most troublesome, and the most
neglected in the whole service. I would rather at any time encounter
the dangers of the battlefield than the hospital and receive the
treatment of privates. It is a shame to humanity and our Government
that it is so much neglected, at least here."