1862 August 9 Harrison's Landing, Va.

[from the war time journal of George Hazen Dana, of the 32nd Massachusetts as compiled by him from his letters and diaries]


       Harrison’s Landing.
                                                              Aug. 9th 1862.
We did not move after all the fuss, I am sorry to say.
I shall never trust to any order again, till we are

actually on the move.        Hooker’s and Sedgwick’s
divisions made an attack on Malvern Hill on that day,
taking possession of it, and taking quite a number of
prisoners, and held it for two days, thereby succeeding
in diverting the attention of the rebels, and drawing
50,000 troops from Richmond down upon them.
This, in order to allow Burnside to run up the Potomac,
and join Pope, which he did, while, without this di-
version on our part, finding out Pope’s comparative
weakness, they would probably have attacked him
before Burnside could have reached him.        After
giving Burnside time to carry out this move,
McClellan ordered our troops back from Malvern
Hill to our lines.        We are still ordered to keep
three days rations in readiness.        I have just
heard that our First Lieut. died this morning, at the
Genl Hospital – two weeks since one of the strongest
men in the regiment.        He leaves a wife, but
no children.        This is the first death among the
officers, but four others have gone home sick, two
resigned, and we have now only ten officers in our
old six companies instead of eighteen, and five out
of that ten would be unable to march, were we
ordered off today -

Our baggage had gone on board of transports and we move
this afternoon at 2 o’clock down the river.        We have
not transports enough to convey all the troops, and I
understand that we are unluckily to be one of the
marching divisions as far as Yorktown, about forty
miles, which is no joke with thermometer at 90 o in
the shade.        At Yorktown – on dit – the balance
of us take transports to join Pope and Burnside, in
all probability.        I am afraid many of our men
will drop, as there are so many of them weak as rats.
I closed the eyes of one of the best men in the company
yesterday.        This makes fifteen deaths in thirteen
days.        Now that we are off, and I am in health,
I will tell you where our regiment has been placed
for the past three weeks – within a few rods of
one of those horrible swamps.        Consequently we
have had more mortality and sickness than almost
any other regiment in the field.        Malarial fever
chiefly -         More than sixty men have also been
sent from ‘ours’ to Ft. Monroe Hospital, bad cases,
beside a large number sick in camp.        So you
can imagine I am glad to be off.        I reckon the
rebs will catch it after our combination with Pope.

MSS 5130