Chattanooga, Wednesday, May 17. Reveille sounded very early every morning now. Begin to feel very well, think I can grind hard-tack enough to keep the system going for a while. Nothing to read or do, so procured a pass to see if I could not find some reading matter in town.
Found Chattanooga literally filled with “gray backs” riding to and fro at will. About 200 hundred came in this morning, a portion of Hardee’s Corps, the picked escort of Old Jeff. They followed him to Washington, Ga., when he took it alone with a few friends, and left them to go and receive their paroles, which they received at Atlanta, Ga. Many of them were quite splendidly dressed, having the finest uniforms I have ever seen with them. I talked with many of them in a friendly strain, astonished to find them so ignorant of the history of the last year. But most of them are heartily tired of war, and say they are willing to bide the will of the United States, but fear Andy Johnson’s severity. One poor fellow in a sad strain said he “was going to the place where his home once was, but God knows where it is now, I have not heard from any of them for ten months.” They were commanded by one of the most desperate, wild-looking colonels I have ever seen, a fair representation of the pictures we see of brigand chiefs or buccaneers. He wore a large, warm, home-made cloak, plaited around the waist like an old fashioned wammus, hanging clear to his heels, and a coarse white hat with a brim a foot wide, and greasy hair below the shoulders. About evening six hundred more came in.
Silver and gold is quite plenty. Dealers in town are reaping a harvest. Scrip is useless, a newsboy hesitating to sell a paper for $100.00 of it.
