Following the American Civil War Sesquicentennial with day by day writings of the time, currently 1863.

Post image for Robert M. Magill—Personal Reminiscences of a Confederate Soldier Boy.

Robert M. Magill—Personal Reminiscences of a Confederate Soldier Boy.

January 26, 2015

Robert M. Magill—Personal Reminiscences of a Confederate Soldier Boy, 39th Georgia Regiment of Infantry

Thursday, 26th.—We arrived at Selma some time after dark; marched to the steamboat that was in readiness for us, and got aboard. The weather was bitterly cold, but there being hospital stores and wood aboard, we soon had fires, but were ordered to put them out, which we did, but some of us soon had them burning again. We had begun to feel somewhat independent. At Montgomery we were marched out into a place that had been muddy and tramped, and had frozen solid in that condition, and told we would remain there until morning, and not a stick of wood any where; but said some would be hauled soon as could. After a while about a dozen drays came, with about as much on each one as four men could carry. Not a fifth of the men got a stick of it. We decided to have some wood or tear down a house. Soon we found an engine with some in the tender. When one of the boys began throwing it out, some fellow ordered him to quit; said he would have him arrested if he did not; that he was compelled to have that wood to heat up his engine in the morning. We told him we thought we needed heating up just then worse than his old engine would in the morning, and so we took the wood, and made us a fire, and did fairly well until day-light.

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