Saturday, 4th—We remained in bivouac all day. The Fifteenth Corps just came in on a road to our left and is to cross the Pedee ahead of the Seventeenth. The rebel skirmishers are just across the river and our skirmishers are keeping up a lively fusillade. Our engineers cannot lay the pontoons so long as the rebels are on the opposite bank of the river and the plan is to send a detachment above or below and cross the river after dark, and flank them. The foragers of the Seventeenth Corps were put in command of the colonel of the Ninth Illinois today and sent out on a raid to Society Hill, fifteen miles south of Cheraw on the railroad. They captured and destroyed two trains of cars loaded with ammunition and provisions, and then tore up the tracks for some miles and burned everything in town that would burn.
Diary of Alexander G. Downing; Company E, Eleventh Iowa Infantry
Friday, 3rd—It is still raining. We left our dismal camp at 7 a. m. and marched eleven miles, going into bivouac near Cheraw. The First Division of the Seventeenth Corps drove the rebels out of their works on Thompson creek and on through Cheraw and across the Great Pedee river. They captured seventeen cannon, three thousand stand of small arms and a number of prisoners. Cheraw is quite a business town and had been a manufacturing center for the rebel army. It is at the head of navigation on the Great Pedee river and has a railroad running to Charleston, South Carolina.
Thursday, 2d—Still in camp. It was misty all day. One of our rebel prisoners was shot today at corps headquarters. He had to pay the penalty for the rebels’ treatment of one of our men, from Company H, Thirty-fourth Illinois, whom they held as a prisoner and shot without provocation. When the prisoners at our headquarters were told that one of them had to pay the penalty, they drew lots, and it fell to a middle-aged man to die. The man was given time to write a letter to his family and then after bidding his comrades farewell, he was led out and shot.
Wednesday, 1st—March came in with an all-day drizzling rain. We remained in bivouac all day. Large foraging parties were sent out, but did not succeed in getting anything, not even enough for the teams and the men that went out. The country is very thinly settled and the people here can hardly raise enough to live on. The soil is very sandy and the country is very heavily timbered, the trees being mostly pitch pine. There are some large turpentine camps about here.
Tuesday, 28th—We moved forward, in an all-day rain. The First Division took the advance, while the Third was in the center, and the Fourth in the rear. Our regiment was rear guard of the corps, and did not get into bivouac till 10 p. m. The corps upon going into bivouac late this afternoon threw up fortifications, for we are twenty miles in advance of the left wing, and have to lie here till they catch up. The Fifteenth Corps is away off to our right.
Monday, 27th—The day was clear and pleasant. About midnight last night our regiment was detailed to tear down an old mill to get material for the engineers with the pontoniers to build a bridge across the Big Lynches creek. We worked till 4 a. m., when we came in for a rest. This morning we took the advance again with the teams and worked all day in building corduroy to help the artillery and wagons across. When one layer of logs would go under in the mud, we had to put on another till all the teams had passed over. Our division got across late in the evening and went into camp about a mile beyond the creek.
Sunday, 26th—We had another all-night rain, but it cleared off this morning. We started at 8 a. m. and marched ten miles, going into camp near the Big Lynches creek. Our division is still in the advance; the First Division did not yet come up with us. We have level country now, but for about twenty-five miles on each side of the Wateree river the land is very rough and covered with pine timber.
Saturday, 25th—It rained all night, but today it is clear. We marched fifteen miles today through the mud. Our regiment is on train guard. We found Little Lynches creek flooded and we had to wade it, the water being waist deep. The Twentieth Corps crossed the creek above us, the day before, and we learned that they raised the floodgates of a dam, letting the water in on us before we could get across. Our supply train had a hard time crossing. The water came up into the wagon boxes and a great deal of our hard bread got wet. We lost several beef cattle in the flood. The First Division did not come across this evening. The hills on this side of the creek are frightful and the mud is deep; when a wagon once settles in one of the holes, it takes a final rest, for no effort of man or beast can extricate it.
Friday, 24th—We started on our march at 7 this morning, our division again taking the advance. We marched twenty miles, and all the way in a fearful northeast rain, accompanied by a high wind. The country is getting very rough. Some of our foragers have been horribly butchered by the rebels’ cavalry during the last few days. Such atrocities as we have witnessed make the horrors of the battlefield seem like tender mercies. In one instance one of our couriers was found hanged on the roadside with a paper attached to his person bearing the words: “Death to all foragers.” At another place we found three men shot dead with a similar notice on their bodies. Yesterday our cavalry in the direction of Chesterfield found twenty-one of our infantry lying dead in a ravine with their throats cut. There was no note giving a reason for the frightful murders.
Thursday, 23d—We broke camp at 7 o’clock this morning and marched ten miles, going into bivouac at Liberty Hill. At noon we crossed the Wateree river, at Perry’s ferry, on a pontoon bridge which the Fifteenth Corps had laid and crossed on just ahead of us. Our division led the advance in the Seventeenth Corps, the other two divisions going into bivouac four miles in our rear.
