Dickson Station, Monday, Oct. 26. Long before reveille I was awake listening to heavy roar of artillery in the front, which at times was quite rapid. Can’t be more than three miles away. The 56th Illinois and 18th Wisconsin went out at midnight with orders to report to Osterhaus at 3 A. M. The firing gradually ceased but could be heard occasionally during the day. General order No. 63 from W. T. Sherman was read to us this morning at 9 A. M. A very able and just order for the government of troops on the march and in camp. Four of the furloughed men returned. Large forage trains sent out and returned plentifully laden with the good things of the Confederacy. Health and spirits of the boys very good and all is lively about camp.
Saturday, October 26, 2013
Iuka, Miss., October 26, 1863.
Let your pocket ‘kerchief float out on the breeze, halloo a little and throw up your bonnet. It’s only a “march at 12 o’clock to-night” but that’s good enough. We’ve been here a week now, drawing clothing and making all kinds of preparations for a “forward,” and the blessed word has come at last. I don’t believe anybody enjoys anything better than I do marching. I feel as coltish all the time on a move as I used to, when after a long week of those short winter days at school, with just time enough between the school hours and dark to cut the next day’s wood (how I did work), Job Walker and I would plunge into those dear old Big Creek woods with our guns or skates, and make such a day of it that I would almost wish all time was cut up into Saturdays. I was on picket last night; full moon, splendid post, right on the old Iuka battle ground, where the fight was the hottest; the old clothes, straps, cartridge boxes and litter always found in such places, the scarred trees, and the mounds a little further up the road, marking the pits where lay the glorious dead, then a half dozen neatly marked single graves, showing the care of some company commander, all tempted me to commit some more poetry. You know I can. But I nobly resisted the temptation. There were no coons or owls. I wished for them. My picketing the last year has almost all been in swamps, and I have learned to love the concerts those innocent animals improvise. When I got in this morning found orders to be ready to move at 12 this p.m. We cross the Tennessee river, I suppose, near Eastport. This beats me all hollow. Can’t see the point, unless we’re moving to check some of Bragg’s flanking motions. Anything for a move. I put the profile of a fort here the other day under the direction of Sherman’s engineer, and the chief told me if I would like it he would have me detailed to assist him. Have had enough of staff duty and excused myself. The men are rapidly becoming more healthy. I have but one person sick now. Dorrance arrived here a few days since, and brought a splendid long letter from you. Have to go to work on some ordnance reports now.
Am half inclined to think that our big march is played out. Rather think now that we will stop at Eastport on the Tennessee river. Isn’t that heavy? Eight miles only and then go to guarding navigation on a river that’s a twin sister of Big Creek. Can’t tell though, one rumor says that we will go 128 miles beyond the river. These generals are positively getting so sharp that a man can’t tell one month ahead what they are going to do.
One of my men who was captured down near Panola, Miss., last April returned to the company for duty yesterday. Some Confederate soldiers captured him and some citizens offered them $10 to each captor for the privilege of hanging the d___d Yanks. They couldn’t make a bargain. Transferred five men to the invalid corps yesterday. Jacob J. Nicholson among them.
26th. Got out desk and Co. property to work. Trains reloaded and sent to the rear. Fear of an attack. Proposed to the boys the order for re-enlistment. Read some in “B. House.” Boys got some good apples and apple butter. Cloudy and quite cold. Contradictory news from the Army of the Potomac. Election news.
Monday, 26th—Everything is quiet. A thousand men are at work every day on the fortifications. The fortifications are being built on a small scale, but are built all around the edge of town so that a small force can hold the place. The cannon are arranged so that they can be turned in any direction.
Sunday, October 26.—Mrs. Harrison, the lady from Florida, has taken charge of the ward at the Springs. She had a pretty hard time at the beginning. The first day the rain poured into her room in torrents. She told me this as a joke, as she has determined not to complain. I think, like myself, she has something of the Mark Tapley spirit, and thinks, unless she has drawbacks, there will be no credit in staying in a hospital. A number of our patients have been sent down to the Springs, and Mrs. H. is paying them the most devoted attention.
To-day is Sunday, but we are too busy to think of going to church. Mrs. W. and myself are up at 4 o’clock every morning, preparing eggnog and toddies for the wounded; they are compelled to have them before eating. One of our patients, by the name of Davis, has had his arm amputated, and is doing well.
Unidentified young soldier in Union musician’s uniform and coat
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Ninth-plate ambrotype, hand-colored ; 7.6 x 6.5 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 074
by John Beauchamp Jones
OCTOBER 26TH.—No news from our armies. The President was in Mobile two days ago.
Gen. Rosecrans has been removed from his command, and Grant put in his place. Meade, it is said in Northern papers, will also be decapitated, for letting Lee get back without loss. Also Dalgren, at Charleston, has been relieved. And yet the Northern papers announce that Richmond will soon and suddenly be taken, and an unexpected joy be spread throughout the North, and a corresponding despondency throughout the South.
The weather is cloudy and cold. The papers announce that all clerks appointed since October 11th, 1862, by order of the Secretary of War, are liable to conscription. This cannot be true; for I know a Secretary who has just appointed two of his cousins to the best clerkships in the department—both of conscript age. But Secretaries know how to evade the law, and “whip the devil round the stump.”
How long will it be after peace before the sectional hatred intensified by this war can abate? A lady near by, the other night, while surveying her dilapidated shoes, and the tattered sleeping-gowns of her children, burst forth as follows: “I pray that I may live to see the United States involved in a war with some foreign power, which will make refugees of her people, and lay her cities in ashes! I want the people ruined who would ruin the South. It will be a just retribution!”
October 26.—Heavy skirmishing took place near Bealton, Va.—Colonel George E. Spencer, commanding five hundred men of the First regiment of Alabama (native) cavalry, on an expedition through Northern Alabama and Mississippi, was attacked and defeated by the rebel forces, “in the extreme south-east corner of Tishomingo County, Miss.”—A fight occurred at Tuscumbia, Ala.—(Doc. 209.)
