Thursday, 7th—Pleasant weather again after several days of cold. Our brigade now provides the provost guard for the city, which takes each regiment down town every fourth day. The work is thus becoming heavier for our brigade. All is quiet in camp.
Tuesday, January 7, 2014
7th. Regt. passed by to Strawberry Plains to turn over horses and equipments. Saw Col. Garrard and got his photo. Bade him goodbye. Gave me a compliment. Got relieved. Saw Miner—full of bombast and gas.
[Diary] January 7.
We have no milk, and at times no wood. There is nobody, not a single hand — not one man up and well enough to get these things. All the boys are getting sick also. It is a tight time. I am nearly ill too. Every evening I fold powders and every afternoon I take my way down street and stop at every house, giving medicine at the door, but lately not going in as I used to, for they keep their rooms so dark I cannot see the patients, and if I order a window opened, I find it nailed up the next time I come. The people are beginning to follow a practice which I dislike. They will wash the patients with strong pokeroot, and vinegar and salt.
Diary And Memoranda, 1864
Jan. 7th. No new army movements. Reports say they have gone into winter quarters. Two months ago the “Astor House” dissolved itself! passed the day reading ” Under the Spell.”
Near Paint Rock River, Ala., Thursday, Jan. 7. Reveille woke us to prepare for the march at 4 A. M. Breakfast cooked and eaten. Tents struck and loaded in due time. I was detailed to stay with the wagons, and did not start for half an hour after Battery left. The roads are frozen and very rough, the weather extremely cold, the air damp and filled with frozen mists, covering our clothes with ice and sleet. The troops marched fast and kept warm, but the train moved slow and tedious, wagons sticking in ruts, mules giving up, lying down in the road, to receive beastly cruelty from merciless drivers, and horrid oaths from impatient wagon masters. Often obliged to put our shoulders to the wheel to get along. Suffered severely from the cold with bare hands.
2 P. M. came upon the officers’ wagon on side of the road, axle-tree broken, where we had to stop and take on the load, and it followed in the rear, with a pole for wheel. A little farther on passed the battery wagon and forge, both wheel teams having given out, and abandoned and waiting for men to be sent back. Passed through Woodville at 4 P. M. Crossed Paint Rock River at dark, having yet three miles to camp through a low wet bottom, timbered thickly with large tall beach, and it grew very dark. Sergeant Runyan drew his wagons one side to wait till morning, but Lieutenant Clark ordered them on.
I reached camp with our wagon at 9 P. M. after much trouble. I never was out in a darker night. Boys were scattered along the road for miles doing the best they could to keep warm and escape the storm, as it began to snow very heavy. Found a bedfellow and joined a squad in an old field where we made shelter between two old corn cribs from the shakes. Built a roaring fire. Received mail, and I was happy to read by the light of the rails of home. Made our beds on the rough frozen ground and slept well till morning.
January 7. The case of R. [L.] Law tried by court martial, which has been in my hands for a month nearly, was disposed of to-day. The court found him guilty on both charges and sentenced him to be dismissed from the Navy, but recommended him to clemency. Proposed to the President three years’ suspension, the first six months without pay. This to be the general order, but if, at the expiration of six or eight months, it was thought best to remit the remainder of the punishment, it could be done.
“Look over the subject carefully,” said the President, “and make the case as light as possible on his father’s account, who is an old friend of mine, and I shall be glad to remit all that you can recommend.”
Commodore Wilkes is behaving badly in many respects. I can do no less than order a court of inquiry in regard to the publication of his letter in violation of orders. He, after having been guilty of the act, evades, or tries to evade, the responsibility, and would see innocent persons rest under the imputation of having committed his offense. In regard to his age, his course is also equivocal and insulting to the Department. By suppressing it he was for a time in commission as Commodore. But notwithstanding suppression and equivocation his age is pretty well authenticated from the files of the Department. A second circular was sent him, suggesting that he might not have received the first. He returned no definite answer but presumed the Department had his correct age from his father, and said he had not received the first circular. The third time he was written to, and he then answered, saying he was born in April, and that he is sixty-two. The records of the Department show that he is not only sixty-two but sixty-five.
by John Beauchamp Jones
JANUARY 7TH.—Gen. J. E. Johnston dispatches from the West that the meat is so indifferent, the soldiers must have an additional quantity of rice.
Beef sells to-day at $1.25 per pound by the quarter. And yet an Englishman at the best hotel yesterday remarked that he never lived so cheaply in any country, his board being only three shillings (in specie) per diem, or about $20 Confederate States notes.
A dozen china cups and saucers sold at auction to-day for $160. Col. Preston, Conscription Bureau, several members of the cabinet, etc. feasted at a cost of $2000! It is said that the Jack was turned up and Jeff turned down in a witticism, and smiled at nem. con. But I don’t believe that.
We have a light snow, the first time the earth has been white this winter.
I am reminded daily of the privations I used to read of in the Revolutionary War. Then thorns were used, now we use pins, for buttons. My waistbands of pantaloons and drawers are pinned instead of buttoned.
Gen. Jno. H. Morgan arrived this evening, and enjoyed a fine reception, as a multitude of admirers were at the depot.
About the same hour the President rode past my house alone, to indulge his thoughts in solitude in the suburbs of the city.
January 7.—Madisonville, La., was entered and occupied by the National forces.—Twenty shells were thrown into the city of Charleston, S. C, from the National batteries under the command of General Gillmore.— Caleb B. Smith, Judge of the United States Court for the District of Indiana, and late Secretary of the Interior, died suddenly at Indianapolis.—The rebel schooner John Scott, while attempting to escape from the harbor of Mobile, Ala., was captured by the Union gunboat Kennebec.
