October 31 — Still on picket. The second gun was ordered to Leetown on picket to-day; now there is only one gun on this post. This morning about three hours before day a courier came in from the outpost and reported that the Yankees were advancing on us. We were all roused and ordered to put our guns in position immediately, which we did, and kept them in battery till daylight, but no Yanks appeared. The report was false, and caused by some loose horses running in a field near the outpost. It is well enough to be very cautious and watchful on the outer picket post, but sometimes some of our cavalry picket men see the Yanks coming when it is really too dark to see anything.
October 2012
Friday, 31st—This was general muster day, and we were reviewed this afternoon by the commanding officer, General McArthur. The general says our division is hard to beat, declaring that it would be difficult to find a better-looking number of men armed for active service than the Sixth Division. After the review we were mustered for pay. The weather is very warm and the roads are dusty.
Columbus, October 31, 1862.
Dear Uncle : — Lucy has had a pretty severe attack of diphtheria. For three or four days she was in a good deal of pain and could neither swallow nor talk. Yesterday and today she has been able to sit up, and is in excellent spirits. We expect to return to Cincinnati next week, and in a week or ten days after I shall probably go to the Twenty-third. My arm has improved the last week more than any time before.
You are glad to hear so good an account of Ned! Lucy says you ought to be glad to hear so good an account of her! That she drove him so skillfully, she thinks a feat.
Unless you come down here by Monday next, we shall be gone home. Laura is looked for with her spouse tomorrow.
Sincerely,
R.
S. BIRCHARD.
Friday, 31st.—Two men from each company furloughed for ten days. Harvey Montgomery came to see us to-day.
Friday, 31st. Reveille between two and three A. M. Breakfasted and off in advance at five on backward track. Reported that our rations had run short, a train been captured, etc.—again that we were to join Schofield, etc. Nothing of interest till we reached camp 10 miles from Bentonville, near where they were fired upon before. I had gone ahead to see if there was a spring up a ravine, advance a little ahead—halted—suddenly, “bang, bang, bang.” Drew revolver and waited. Nothing appeared. Saw Hoppy, Co. B, running by—followed. Heard him telling a woman to show him where to find the rebels. I told him we knew enough and two of us rushed up the hill and others followed. Burr, Co. G, rushed ahead. I saw nobody, soon heard shouting—Burr—saw him and followed. Got off half a mile. Foolishness to pursue so far with such a start. Followed a distance and was returning when we met Capt. Welch’s command. Scouted the woods some and went to camp. One man was overtaken, his arms taken and himself shot. Got dinner at the house. Considerable excitement.
Corinth, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, etc. The troops were engaged in fortifying. All the buildings on the outskirts were torn down regardless of worth and hauled away by the troops to build stables, barracks, etc.
Civil Pay to P.O. Gorman or Bearer; October 31, 1862.
Crutchfield’s Currency
October—This month passed off with nothing new, except Katz returned on the 7th, and Donau was discharged. We are still on our old camp.
OCTOBER 31ST.—If it be not a Yankee electioneering trick to operate at the election in New York, on the fourth of November, the Northern correspondence with Europe looks very much like speedy intervention in our behalf.
Winder has really dismissed all his detectives excepting Cashmeyer, about the worst of them.
If we gain our independence by the valor of our people, or assisted by European intervention, I wonder whether President Davis will be regarded by the world as a second Washington? What will his own country say of him? I know not, of course; but I know what quite a number here say of him now. They say he is a small specimen of a statesman, and no military chieftain at all. And worse still, that he is a capricious tyrant, for lifting up Yankees and keeping down great Southern men. Wise, Floyd, etc. are kept in obscurity; while Pemberton, who commanded the Massachusetts troops, under Lincoln, in April, 1861, is made a lieutenant-general; G. W. Smith and Lovell, who were office-holders in New York, when the battle of Manassas was fought, are made major-generals, and the former put in command over Wise in Virginia, and all the generals in North Carolina. Ripley, another Northern general, was sent to South Carolina, and Winder, from Maryland, has been allowed to play the despot in Richmond and Petersburg. Washington was maligned.
Oct. 31.—Mr. W. said last night the farmers felt uneasy about the “Emancipation Proclamation” to take effect in December. The slaves have found it out, though it had been carefully kept from them.
“Do yours know it?” I asked.
“Oh, yes. Finding it to be known elsewhere, I told it to mine with fair warning what to expect if they tried to run away. The hounds are not far off.”
The need of clothing for their armies is worrying them too. I never saw Mrs. W. so excited as on last evening. She said the provost-marshal at the next town had ordered the women to knit so many pairs of socks.
“Just let him try to enforce it and they’ll cow-hide him. He’ll get none from me. I’ll take care of my own friends without an order from him.”
“Well,” said Mr. W., “if the South is defeated and the slaves set free, the Southern people will all become atheists, for the Bible justifies slavery and says it shall be perpetual.”
“You mean, if the Lord does not agree with you, you’ll repudiate him.”
“Well, we’ll feel it’s no use to believe in anything.”
At night the large sitting-room makes a striking picture. Mr. W., spare, erect, gray-headed, patriarchal, sits in his big chair by the odorous fire of pine logs and knots roaring up the vast fireplace. His driver brings to him the report of the day’s picking and a basket of snowy cotton for the spinning. The hunter brings in the game. I sit on the other side to read. The great spinning wheels stand at the other end of the room, and Mrs. W. and her black satellites, the heads of the elderly women in bright bandanas, are hard at work. Slender and auburn-haired, she steps back and forth out of shadow into shine following the thread with graceful movements. Some card the cotton, some reel it into hanks. Over all the firelight glances, now touching the golden curls of little John toddling about, now the brown heads of the girls stooping over their books, now the shadowy figure of little Jule, the girl whose duty it is to supply the fire with rich pine to keep up the vivid light. If they would only let the child sit down! But that is not allowed, and she gets sleepy and stumbles and knocks her head against the wall and then straightens up again. When that happens often it drives me off. Sometimes while I read the bright room fades and a vision rises of figures clad in gray and blue lying pale and stiff on the blood-sprinkled ground.
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Note: To protect Mrs. Miller’s job as a teacher in New Orleans, the diary was published anonymously, edited by G. W. Cable, names were changed and initials were often used instead of full names — and even the initials differed from the real person’s initials.
