October 18th 1862 [Saturday]. Camp near Shepherdstown, Md.
My Dear Father:
I received a letter of 14th last from you this morning.
I suppose from what you say of the Tribune that you haven’t seen some of the daily issues lately at least some that I have seen. One copy I remember of seeing in which he urged the President to give General Fremont an important command. A man, in my opinion, was more unfit to command an army of forty thousand men than I am of commanding a Brigade.
I want to ask you a plain question: If General Fremont could resign his command only, and get to New York and before when the country needed him in the field, why couldn’t I resign my command of my company and go home and stay as long as I please?
You say that it is your opinion that McClellan and his officers caused Pope to lose the Battle of Bull Run. If you had been there and seen how the latter fought, you would have thought differently. In the first place McClellan had no command at all. And in the second, the Army of the Potomac and Burnsides Army fought the Battle of Bull Run unaided, almost entirely, by either Pope’s or Siegel’s armies. Pope had his army of nearly thirty thousand men and, in my opinion, if he had put them in at the right time, we would have been entirely successful, but he didn’t do it. He wanted us to whip the Rebels and then he was going to put his army in pursuit. And it’s my honest and candid opinion and also of nearly all the officers, that I have seen that were there, that we were whipped with about one man to our three, and all by Pope’s blundering.
The Army of the Potomac lost in proportion in numbers ten men where Pope’s army lost one. Out of our little battalion, of two hundred and about twenty five men, we lost nearly one hundred in killed and wounded, besides two officers killed and one so badly wounded that it is thought he will die.
And at Antietam, in which you seem to think that Porter’s Corps was not engaged, we lost fifty-four men and one officer in the second Infantry in which I have been serving. There has been out of twenty that started, five officers killed and four badly wounded. One was shot in the mouth and his jaw is paralyzed for life. Another lost his leg, another was shot in the groin and it is doubtful very much whether he will live or not. The other one is shot in the breast and when last heard from was not doing very well. Besides them, three have been cashiered for cowardice before the enemy. Two have been retired and one dismissed, reducing the officers down to three that intended the field at first. Out of the whole 2nd Infantry there are not men enough left to make three full companies.
When we crossed over the River it was not by General McClellan’s order, but General Porter’s and, if you remember, none worth mentioning were lost with the exception of the 118th Pennsylvania, Corn Exchange Regiment. That was owed actively to their repugnance to wetting their feet. It they had gone two hundred yards farther down the river and waded across, I believe, they would have all got across safe but instead of that they tried to cross a little dam that would almost of put one man at a time and consequently was that it took them as long to cross that the enemy came up and literally cut them to pieces. For that dam, we took one man killed and four wounded, in all the fight’s that have been taken place, I suppose, you haven’t seen one where the Regulars have been in.
Please write soon. Give my love to all,
Your son W. J. Fisher
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