Feb. 9, 1862

Feb. 9, 1862: In Washington, Gen. Charles Stone, who had been in command of the force that was sent to their doom at the Battle of Ball’s Bluff, is arrested on trumped-up charges of Treason, after months of hearings, on and off, with the Congressional Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War. He is even charged with having colluded with the enemy in order to bring about the Ball’s Bluff disaster. Gen. McClellan, his close friend--under pressure from the War Department and Secretary Stanton--finally acquiesces and throws his friend under the bus. Stone is relieved of command and rank, and is remanded to imprisonment in Fort Lafayette, without having been able to face his accusers or examine the evidence against him.

---Mrs. Frances Goggin Parker, of Bedford Co., Virginia, writes to her son, Robert W. Parker, serving in the 2^nd Virginia Cavalry Regiment, giving him and his brother George counsel and praise about their behavior in the army, echoing what many mothers felt and hoped:
. . . I trust you have been spared for some good purpose and you will be humbled at the thought of the blessings you have received and be always ready to thank the giver for every mercy bestowed on you as my sons are obliged to be engaged in this distressing warfare – it helps a great deal to keep my spirits up – to hear they get on well with their companions to hear they are steady and prudent not partaking of the vices so common in camp – George told me he had been often begged to play cards – he told them he did not know how and never intended to know – he had been asked if he had any temper that he could get on any way and not swear – he told them swearing done no good no matter what they had to encounter he got on better without it than they did with it – there is no wrong way about any thing that will do in place of the right way – the right way is the safe and pleasant way in every sense of the word . . . .Sergeant Robert Parker would survive to serve throughout the entire War, only to be killed in skirmishing at Appomattox Court House on the morning of April 9, 1865, the day Gen. Lee will surrender to Gen. Grant’s army.

–In southeastern Missouri, 1^st Lt. Charles Wright Wills, of the 7^th Illinois Cavalry, writes home on this date to his family about the horrors of the internecine neighbor-against-neighbor violence in Missouri:
Novice as I am in riding, the cold and fatigue were so severe on me that I slept like a top horseback, although I rode with the advance guard all the time and through country the like of which I hope you’ll never see. There is a swamp surrounding every hill and there are hills the whole way. Damn such a country. We passed, a small scouting party of us, the bones of seven Union men. They were all shot at one time. I didn’t go with the party to see them. One of our guards went out with a party of nine of the 17th Infantry boys and captured some 20 secesh and brought in, in a gunny sack, the bones of five other Union men. I noticed there were no skulls and asked the guide where they were. He said that "as true as truth the secesh who murdered them had taken the skulls to use for soup bowls." I was talking with a man to-night who had his two sons shot dead in the house by his side last week. A gang of fellows came to the house while he was eating supper and fired through between the logs. He burst open the door and escaped with but one shot in him after he saw that his sons were killed. I can hardly believe that these things are realities, although my eyes and cars bear witness. In my reading I can remember no parallel either in truth or fiction for the state of things we have in this southeastern portion of Missouri. Anyone can have his taste for the marvelous, however strong, glutted by listening to our scouts and the refugees here. I thank God from my heart that dear old Illinois knows nothing of the horrors of this war.