Wednesday, September 14, 2011

Saturday Sept. 14

Another letter from Rufus.  He is seeing active service now.  He says "Our regiment last Wednesday lay in Rifle Pits all day, the advance post of the Maryland side.  Since then we have been extended as pickets between Falling Water and Chain Bridge.  My company were deployed along some four miles including the only ford; the rebel pickets, cavalry and bivouacks in plain sight across the Potomac, here a little wider than the Ohio.  I enjoyed this week's work very much.  There is just enough danger in it to make it romantic.  Our camp or rather bivouac for we have not a tent with us, is within a few rods of Montgomery Hall; once Gen. Washington's headquarters.  Across the river on a high hill, now the site of a powerful battery of 30 guns, is the spot where Clay and Randolph fought their duel." 
I think that the Wisconsin sixth must be a very fine and well drilled regiment as I often see in the different newspapers very complimentary notices of it.  He says that they "are now uniformed in blue and armed with Belgian rifles - the best in the service, and have one of the best Colonels (Lysander Cutler) in the army".

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