Letters from Triune: 'No wish ... is too cruel for a traitor'

Photo illustration of newspaper clippings of accounts from wartime Triune.

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Third in an occasional series.

Writing from the Triune Hills in Middle Tennessee, "Harry D" of Battery C of the 1st Ohio Light Artillery opens with a moment of rare calm. Sundays along the Harpeth River, he says, can be almost peaceful — no inspections, no bustle — just enough quiet for soldiers to sit with a shingle or tin plate on their knees and write home. 

The Ashtabula (Ohio) Weekly Telegraph
published the letter from Harry D, either
Harry Dinhanan or Harry Dingman of
the 1st Ohio Light Artillery.

Harry D — probably Harry Dinhanan or Harry Dingman — also fumes over Northern politics, especially the nomination of Copperhead Democrats like Clement Vallandigham, reserving some of the letter’s harshest language for anyone he sees as disloyal to the Union. Soldiers, he warns, will remember — and vote. Loyalty, he makes clear, is the one unforgivable line to cross, and the army’s patience for traitors, whether in gray or in civvies, is long gone.

"No wish, however malignant, is too cruel for a traitor," Harry D writes in the letter published in the Ashtabula (Ohio) Weekly Telegraph on June 27, 1863. 

My recent visits to Triune — where the Union army built a network of redoubts, earthworks and rifle pits a 20-minute drive from Franklin, Tenn. — inspired this "Letters From Triune" series.

Union army-built earthworks at Triune, Tennessee

ARMY CORRESPONDENCE

Southwick's Battery, At the Triune Hills, June 14th, 1863

READERS OF THE TELEGRAPH: We have all heard of a "quiet on the Potomac," and many comments have been made upon it, by unthinking, misinformed, people. Here on the Harpeth there is not so much of quiet, although to day matters have assumed a Sabbath day quietude; not even an inspection to mar the tranquility of repose and season of reflection.

And better than all, these Sunday resting spells give the soldier an opportunity to write letters. Look which ever way you will there sits your lad with a shingle on his knee, perhaps an upturned plate, busily chalking down the talk on paper to the dear one perhaps, the one above all price inestimable. Or it may be to a mother whose all of hope and joy he is, and whose loss to her would make her evening of life a chilling blank, a woeful chaos of grief. 

On the face of another scribe you may note the glow of strong manly devotion for the wife in the far off northern home, and the tenderness and truth of filial love on the open page of still another face. Such is the study of faces, the lesson to be learned from the tablet of each one's heart is more difficult to get. Our private opinion is that many little romances could be read from the heart histories of these letter writers and receivers.

Clement Vallandigham
(Library of Congress)

Those readers of the Ashtabula Telegraph who feel an interest in the members of Southwick's Battery could not much better please them than by writing letters. Of course they should be kind and encouraging ones, not hissing with copperhead politics, or fault with the Administration, or any thing in the least degree tainted with treason. We're sure such will not come from Ashtabula, Lake, or Geauga counties, to this army. But in this day of our Nation's calamity, such strange things happen. We are never sure where the serpent will spring from.  

There is the envenomed hiss of corrupt politics on the winds that blow from the North as well as from the Sunny South land. And the keenest sting of all to us from Ohio is the recent nomination of [Clement] Vallandigham and [George] Pugh, by the Democratic party, or better named the snakes from the vomit of hell, sick by a surfeit of treason. Excuse such harsh terms; you would, if you could know how the soldiers in this army feel towards enemies at home. But friends if we are rightly informed, soldiers will vote, and woe betide any blasted home rebel who may be a nominee for office. He might as well crawl away into the inlet to perdition and draw the hole in after his nasty carcass, eternally hiding the filthy thing from the face of earth. No wish, however malignant, is too cruel for a traitor.

Be we ever so merciful to other evil doers, and forgiving to those who wroug us many wise else than by treason, we would even pray for the total and immediate extermination ot traitors from this Free America, that is to be. In this Battery, a unanimity of loyal sentiment and patriotic principle is our platform of politics.

While officers of regiments with which we come in contact show a disregard for the sacred cause of liberty, by fawning about traitors in women's garb, that attract [unreadable] by the witchery of womanly prettiness; the officers of our battery pass them by in silent contempt and perhaps regret, that the sweet creatures were not favor of Union. We feel an honest pride in such officers and in there [sic] example to us is invaluable.

An aerial view of the site of one of the three United States Army redoubts at Triune.

Here at Triune are fields so large that divisions can drill togetber, and Captain [Daniel K.] Southwick takes the three batteries of his command and drills them together. It is a splendid and exciting spectacle to witness. The command consists of our battery in the 2ud Brigade, the 4th Michigan in the 1st, and Co. I, 4th Regulars, in the 3d Brigade. 

To say that the Captain can handle the three Batteries and do it well is but giving him the due meed of praise; and he would not have been appointed chief of Artillery in the 3d Division if his military abilities were not of a high order. 

We are encamped in a beautiful grove of noble trees, on a slight eminence; the infantry being costly placed in regular rows of tents just down the slope of the hill and on the plain below. Setting under the wing of these lofty maples at night, and looking at the brightly illuminated city of tents, reminds us of a city lit up for the reception of some idol of the people, or for some festive sports.

Apart from all there is in war to sadden us, we have much to make us happy, if we only let contentment be our rule of life. As the eye turns involuntary upward at these silent preachers of the grove pointing Heavenward, the heart grows heavy with a sense of woe; — grows weary of a war we could not shun with honor. And as the sweet and ever present beauties in nations ministry, lead us homeward through the pleasant meads of memory and imagination; the fire of patriotic ardor is newly kindled in our souls.

We are ready for the bloody work of war, and when it comes to us, you will not be ashamed of Battery C.

Yours truly, Harry D