Fayetteville, Monday, Nov. 9. I laid in camp all day. 2nd Division came up on another road. One day’s rations of crackers issued to us. The infantry regiments are entirely out. Mills were worked all day grinding cornmeal. Lieutenant Amsden of the 12th Battery went out with squad of Battery boys to pick up horses by order of Captain Dillon. Returned late at night with twenty mules and ten or twelve horses, but mostly too young for team purposes. We got one very pretty horse for our Platoon. They report abundance of all good things off from the road where “Yankee” vandals have not reached, with no end to come. No wonder that the rebs are making a desperate effort for the recapture of this country. We are in their very granary and without it they cannot live. A report is rife that Thomas has evacuated Chattanooga, but I trust it is not so. I would write, but there is no communication open yet.
Saturday, November 9, 2013
Unidentified soldier in Union frock coat and forage cap with cartridge pouch, ammunition pack, and bayoneted musket.
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Quarter-plate tintype, hand-colored ; 11.7 x 9.4 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 088
by John Beauchamp Jones
NOVEMBER 9TH.—The President returned Saturday evening, looking pretty well. Yesterday, Sunday, he was under the necestity of reading a dispatch from Gen. Lee, announcing the surprise and capture of two brigades on the Rappahannock!
This is a dark and gloomy day, spitting snow; while not a few are despondent from the recent disasters to our arms. It is supposed that we lost 3000 or 4000 men on Saturday. A day or two before, Gen. Echols had his brigade cut up at Lewisburg! Per contra, Brig.-Gen. W. E. Jones captured, on Saturday, at Rogerville, 850 prisoners, 4 pieces of artillery, 2 stands of colors, 60 wagons, and 1000 animals. Our loss, 2 killed and 8 wounded. So reads a dispatch from “R. Ransom, Major-Gen.”
There is some excitement in the city now, perhaps more than at any former period. The disaster to the “Old Guard” has put in the mouths of the croakers the famous words of Napoleon at Waterloo: “Sauce qui peat.” We have out our last reserves, and the enemy still advances. They are advancing on North Carolina, and there was some danger of the President being intercepted at Weldon. Thousands believe that Gen. Bragg is about to retire from before Grant’s army at Chattanooga. And to-day bread is selling at 50 cents per loaf—small loaf!
And now the Assistant Secretary of War, Judge Campbell, is “allowing” men to pass to Maryland, through our lines. First, is a Rev. Mr. A. S. Sloat, a chaplain in the army. He was degraded for some offense by his own church, and his wife and children having preceded him (all being Northern born), as stated in his letter on file, he is allowed a passport to follow them. Recommended by Mr. S. R. Tucker. Second, Mr. J. L. White and Mr. Forrester are “allowed” passports to go to Maryland for ordnance stores. Recommended by Col. Gorgas. Third and lastly, “Tom Wash. Smith” is “allowed,” by the Assistant Secretary, to take fifteen boxes of tobacco to Maryland, and promises to bring back “medical stores.” Recommended by B. G. Williams, one of Gen. Winder’s detectives, and by Capt. Winder, one of the general’s sons. They bring in stores, when they return, in saddle-bags, while whole cargoes are landed at Wilmington!
November 9.—A snow-storm prevailed in Virginia this day.—A fight between a party of guerrillas and National cavalry occurred on the Little River, in which the rebels were repulsed with a loss of fifty killed and forty captured.
—The rebel steamer Ella and Anna, while attempting to run the blockade into Wilmington, North-Carolina, was captured by the National gunboat Niphon.—Robert Toombs delivered a speech in the Hall of the House of Representatives of Georgia, in which he denounced the officials of the rebel government, though he adhered firmly to the cause of the South. He especially deprecated the depreciation of the rebel government’s currency system and impressment policy, the latter of which he affirmed “had sown the seeds of discontent broadcast over the land, and was generating hostility to the government itself.”
