Following the American Civil War Sesquicentennial with day by day writings of the time, currently 1863.

Post image for Downing’s Civil War Diary.–Alexander G. Downing.

Downing’s Civil War Diary.–Alexander G. Downing.

December 3, 2014

Diary of Alexander G. Downing; Company E, Eleventh Iowa Infantry

Saturday, 3d—We started off on our railroad destroying this morning at 7 o’clock. Our corps destroyed about ten miles of road, from Millen down to Station No. 70, where we went into camp for the night. The Fourteenth and Twentieth Corps are off on our left, destroying the railroad from Millen toward Augusta. At Millen there was located one of those hell-holes, a rebel prison, where the rebels kept about thirteen hundred of our men as prisoners. They rushed them off on the train for Charleston, South Carolina, just before our army arrived. I never saw a feed-yard looking so filthy and forsaken as this pen.[1] We burned everything here that a match would ignite.


[1] The treatment which our soldiers received in the Confederate prisons is the one dark, damnable stain that the South of that time will always have to carry. The North can forgive, but it cannot forget.—A. G. D.

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