The Leavenworth Daily Times
Kansas
June 23, 1861
[Correspondence of the Times.]
.
Camp Fremont1, June 20th, ’61.
Dear Times:—I have been for sometime in a study as to whether to-day is Thursday or some other day; the monotony of camp life mixes things so considerable. In short to use Ike Marvel’s words, slightly altered, “the hours pass without knowledge and the Summer winds whistle uncared for.” Day after day drags its sometimes not very slow length along, diversified by drills and fatigue parties, roll calls and guard mountings, and the other et ceteras of a soldier’s life, too often associated with indolence and ease. The camp is the gymnasium of the Nation now, and dyspeptic, thin-limbed Americans will become robust and heart; sleep sound o’nights, and relish keenly the mess pork and hard bread, which Uncle Sam provides in no stinted quantity, for them who now aid him in the struggle for existence. Each meal is eaten with a zest and appetite which only health and exercise can give, and one feels, as it were, so rejuvenated after long years of mental toil in the realm of the quill and tripod, that he may be tempted to exclaim, “No middle ground for me; give me the tent of the Nomad, or a moonstone palace in the gorgeous realms of the ideal.”
Camp fare, after all, is not the poorest that has ever fallen to the lot of man. I have had more limited rations during the early days of Kansas, and of a poorer quality, than are furnished to the gallant 1st. Rations for ten days include seven pounds of fresh meat to three of salt junk; rice beans, coffee, hard and soft bread, are the “condiments;” appropos of which, a la Corwin, we have sugar and salt, but no mustard. An occasional supply of what Dr. Jennison terms field onions, lettuce, and other “garden sass,” finds its way in some mysterious manner, through the lines.
But to the news, which is akin to currency just now—very little, in circulation…
Cosmopolite.
.
- Probably at Cape Girardeau, Mo