August 22 — We were relieved from picket at dusk this evening by a section of Magreggor’s battery. After we were relieved we came back and camped with the battalion, near Culpeper Court House.
August 2013
22nd. Reveille at daylight and orders to march at 6 A. M. Rear guard. Hastened breakfast and led out. Went down to the road to an orchard and dismounted. Remained there till noon, idling, joking and eating apples. Read Independent. How thankful I am that I can have something to read. Loitered along the road, getting to London at 9 P. M. 3 miles. Camped in a poor, nasty place. Slept well.
August 22d, 1863.
I had comforted myself with the reflection that when we returned to Kentucky, where communications were uninterrupted by guerillas, and were only separated by twenty-four hours of time, I might be permitted to correspond with my family without such harrowing delays, for I would not have my darling in doubt as to my situation or whereabouts for one single day, knowing, as I do, the uncertainty of suspense is worse than the reality. But ’tis said, “The darkest hour is just before the dawn,” and, even as I write, my mind filled with dark thoughts, a ray of light from my Northern home flashes across my vision. The whole current of my thought is changed, and thankfulness takes the place of my repining. Thankfulness that it is as well with my beloved ones as it is. Oh, that I could remove every burden, and make their pathway smooth and flowery. I find most of our trials are imaginary, but none the less real for being so. For instance, my beloved wife’s imagination pictures me on my weary way back to old Virginia’s blood-stained fields, subject to every hardship, exposed to every danger, and her suffering could be no greater if it were so. On the contrary, I am still in Kentucky, in a pleasant, shady grove, enjoying a season of welcome quiet and repose, soft bread to eat, plenty of pure, cold water to drink. What more could mortals crave. The newspapers were right, as far as they went, about our being ordered to the Potomac. We did receive such orders, but General Burnside telegraphed the War Department the Ninth Corps had marched, during the year, an average of twenty miles a day; that it had just returned from an exhausting campaign in Mississippi; that the men were worn down by fatigue and sickness, and were unfit for active service, and asked that they be allowed to remain here for a season. His request was granted. One year has passed since I left my pleasant home to serve my country—a year big with the fate of millions yet unborn—a year the most eventful in our history; perhaps in the world’s history.
Beverly Ford, Va.,
August 22, 1863.
Dear Parents:—
I received a piece of paper from E. a few days since, saying that he had received my letter and would answer it soon. The answer has not come yet. The envelope contained the perfumery I sent for, and, if it is not effectual, I don’t know of anything that would be. Fortunately, I am not troubled with the “crumbs” now. All the men who ever are rid of them are so now. A good boiling does the business, but there are some who would be lousy if they had every convenience and a year’s time, and just as soon as we start on a march again they will be all over. “All is quiet on the Rappahannock” yet. The hot weather paralyzes both armies, but lying still they are gaining. The flies are so troublesome that horses do not gain so fast as they would in cooler weather, but they still improve some. Many of the cavalry regiments and batteries are getting new horses.
The commissary is issuing soft bread two days out of three, nice fresh bread, too, and, oh, if we had some butter! He issues small rations of potatoes and dried apples occasionally, and dessicated vegetables. I presume you have never seen any of this last. It is in square cakes an inch thick and seems to consist of potato, carrot, turnip, onion, cabbage, red pepper, etc., scalded and then pressed and dried. I am confident that if we could learn how to cook it we should like it. We are all hungry for vegetables, but I cannot cook it nor have I seen any one who could so that it will be good. We have put in fresh beef and made soup of it, and we have boiled it down dry and tried it every way we can think of, and don’t succeed yet. The fault seems to be that each vegetable loses its individual flavor in the cooking and all blend together in a nondescript sort of a dish that isn’t good a bit.
The principal topics of news in camp are the arrival of the conscripts and the departure of Colonel Rice. Captain Judson came down from Philadelphia this week with two hundred men for the Eighty-third, and he has gone back for more. Of the two hundred but three men, so they say, were drafted. All the rest are substitutes, and most of them two years and nine months men. They seem to be pretty hard nuts. They are very quiet here, but Captain Judson says they had quite a tendency to get lost on their way down.
Colonel Rice’s “eagles” have been setting a good while, and the other morning on waking he found they had hatched a pair of “stars” and “marching orders” to report in Baltimore, and with many thanks to the eagles he proceeded to obey immediately. The senior officer of the brigade now is Colonel Chamberlain of the Twentieth Maine, a former professor in a college and a very fine man, though but little posted in military matters. He is absent now on sick leave, though about to return, I hear.
August 22.—The enemy are shelling Chattanooga; all the hospitals are leaving there. I can not help, from looking round and thinking, that perhaps ere many days we may be compelled to leave here.
Vicksburg, Saturday, Aug. 22. Health good, but severe headache and bad digestion. Butter all gone, no more to be found. I don’t feel much disposed to eat ”sow belly”; had grape sauce bottled and charged.
Saturday, 22d—After an all night run, we landed this morning at daylight at Goodrich’s Landing, on the Louisiana side, from which place we marched two miles up the river and went into bivouac, where we remained all day. There were four brigades in the expedition, comprising about five thousand men, and commanded by Brigadier General Stephenson. There is a camp of several thousand negro refugees here, old men, women and children, they having fled from the plantations. They are fed on Government rations doled out to them, which cannot take the place of their accustomed corn bread and pork. They are poorly cared for, the place being a miserable camp of filthy hovels, and are dying by the hundreds of disease and neglect.
Unidentified soldier in Union uniform with wife and daughters holding saxhorn.
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Quarter-plate ambrotype ; 9.1 x 11.7 cm (case)
Liljenquist Family Collection of Civil War Photographs; Ambrotype/Tintype photograph filing series; Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
Record page for image is here.
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Note – This image has been digitally adjusted for one or more of the following:
- fade correction,
- color, contrast, and/or saturation enhancement
- selected spot and/or scratch removal
- cropped for composition and/or to accentuate subject matter
- straighten image
Civil War Portrait 066
August 22.—The bombardment of Fort Sumter was continued and finally reduced to a ruin, although not captured by the Nationals. Six hundred and four shots were fired at the Fort during the day, of which four hundred and nineteen struck inside and outside. The ceast wall was crushed and breached so that the shot swept through the Fort, the parapet was undermined, the north-west wall knocked down, and all the guns dismounted.—(See Supplement.)
—A detachment of the Twelfth Pennsylvania cavalry, under command of Captain Gerry, were ordered by Acting Brigadier-General L. B. Pierce on a reconnoissance from Martinsburgh, Va. Going to Bunker Hill, and thence to Leetown, they encountered the enemy, and captured a number of the rebel Gillmore’s men, one lieutenant and one horse, and returned to camp this afternoon without loss.
—No attention having been paid to General Gillmore’s demand for the surrender of Fort Sumter, and other rebel works in Charleston harbor, heavy rifled shells were thrown into Charleston, from a battery located in a marsh five mile’s distant from that city—a range, before that time never attained by any piece of artillery known to the world; General Beauregard protested against the bombardment as “inhuman and unheard of.”
—The United States gunboats Satellite and Reliance were captured to-night off the mouth of the Rappahannock River, by a party of rebels, under the command of Lieutenant Commander J. Taylor Wood, of the rebel navy.—Colonel Wilder, with a force belonging to the army of the Cumberland, crossed the Tennessee River, opposite Shell Mound, and burned the railroad bridge over the Nicojack, destroying for the time all communication between the rebels at Chattanooga and those in the vicinity of Bridgeport, Ala.—A riot occurred at Danville, Ill., in which three citizens were killed and a number wounded.—The schooner Wave, having run the blockade at San Luis Pass, near Galveston, Texas, was captured by the National gunboat Cayuga.
—The expedition to Central Mississippi, which left La Grange, Tenn., on the thirteenth instant, returned this day, having met with the greatest success. The force consisted of detachments of the Third Michigan, Second Iowa, Eleventh Illinois, Third Illinois, Fourth Illinois, and Ninth Illinois cavalry, and a part of the Ninth Illinois mounted infantry, all under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel Phillips, of the Ninth Illinois infantry. They left the line of the Memphis and Charleston Railroad, and proceeded by different routes to Oxford, Miss., where the force united and moved on to Grenada, via Water Valley and Coffeyville, meeting with but little opposition till the seventeenth instant, when within eight miles of Grenada. Here the rebels began to oppose their further progress. But they pushed steadily forward, driving the enemy before them and compelling him to fly from behind his fortifications at Grenada, and the victorious troops entered the town with the loss of but one man. The rebel loss is unknown. Several of their wounded were found in the hospital at that place. The Unionists captured quite a number of prisoners. During the evening Colonel Phillips was joined by a force of eight hundred cavalry from Vicksburgh, under the command of Colonel Winslow, of the Fourth Iowa cavalry. The result of the capture was that the Unionists came into possession of sixty-five locomotives and five hundred cars.
As the enemy had destroyed the railroad bridges across the Tallabusha River before he retreated from the town, it was wholly impracticable to run the stock North, and so it was given over to the flames, together with the large railroad buildings belonging to the Mississippi Central and Mississippi and Tennessee railroads, which form a junction at that place. Probably the value of the property destroyed was not less than three millions of dollars, and the loss to the rebels is wholly irreparable. The forces of Colonel Winslow and Lieutenant-Colonel Phillips were joined together here, and proceeded northward on the line of the Mississippi and Tennessee Railroad, meeting with but little opposition on the route. After crossing the Tallahatchie River at Panola, the forces separated, and the Vicksburghers proceeded to Memphis, and the rest of the forces to their respective camps on the Memphis and Charleston Railroad.
by John Beauchamp Jones
AUGUST 22D.—All the guns of Fort Sumter on the south face have been silenced by the land batteries of the enemy on Morris Island; and this account is two days old. What has taken place since, none here but Gen. Cooper and the President know. But our battery, Wagner, dismounted one of the enemy’s Parrott guns and blew up two magazines. It is rumored to-day that Sumter has been abandoned and blown up; also that 20,000 of Grant’s men have been ordered to New York to quell a new émeute. Neither of these rumors are credited, however, by reflecting men. But they may be true, nevertheless.
Passengers from Bermuda say two monster guns were on the steamer, and were landed at Wilmington a few days ago, weighing each twenty-two tons; carriages, sixty tons; the balls, 15 inches in diameter, length not stated, weighing 700 pounds ; the shells, not filled, weigh 480 pounds ; and 40 pounds of powder are used at each discharge. They say these guns can be fired with accuracy and with immense effect seven miles. I wonder if the President will send them to Charleston? They might save the city.
The balls fired by the enemy are eight inches in diameter, and two feet in length; 2000 of these, solid and filled, have struck the southern face of Sumter.
It is now positively asserted that Morgan’s head was shaved, when they put him in the penitentiary.
Night before last all the clerks in the city post-office resigned, because the government did not give them salaries sufficient to subsist them. As yet their places have not been filled, and the government gets no letters—some of which lying in the office may be of such importance as to involve the safety or ruin of the government. To-morrow is Sunday, and of course the mails will not be attended to before Monday—the letters lying here four days unopened! This really looks as if we had no Postmaster-General.
