November 29, 1864
I did not have room
to tell you of the ingenious inventions of General Butler for the destruction
of the enemy. He never is happy unless he has half a dozen contrivances on
hand. One man has brought a fire-engine, wherewith he proposes to squirt on
earthworks and wash them all down! An idea that Benjamin considered highly
practicable. Then, with his Greek fire, he proposed to hold a redoubt with only
five men and a small garden engine. “Certainly,” said General Meade; “only your
engine fires thirty feet, and a minié rifle 3000 yards, and I am afraid your five men might be killed,
before they had a chance to burn up their adversaries!” Also he is going to get
a gun that shoots seven miles and, taking direction by compass, burn the city
of Richmond with shells of Greek fire. If that don't do, he has an auger that
bores a tunnel five feet in diameter, and he is going to bore to Richmond, and
suddenly pop up in somebody's basement, while the family are at breakfast! So
you see he is ingenious. It is really summer warm today; there are swarms of
flies, and I saw a bumble-bee and a grasshopper.
SOURCE: George R. Agassiz, Editor, Meade’s
Headquarters, 1863-1865: Letters of Colonel Theodore Lyman from the Wilderness
to Appomattox, p. 284
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