Monday, 23d—It is still raining, and our men have made a new landing within six miles of Pocotaligo. It is at one of the inlets which has a channel deep enough for small steamboats to come up. This will shorten the haul of our provisions about twenty miles—no small item in this land of sandy bottoms.
Diary of Alexander G. Downing; Company E, Eleventh Iowa Infantry
Sunday, 22d—A detail from our regiment was sent out along the road today to help the loaded wagons across the deep mud-holes, as they come through from Beaufort. It is reported that the Fourteenth and Twentieth Corps have crossed into South Carolina and are floundering in the mud bottoms of the Savannah river.
Saturday, 21st—It is still raining. The teams are going back and forth day and night, hauling provisions. The roads are so bad now at places that the teams get stuck in the mud.
Friday, 20th—It rained all day and the roads are becoming quite muddy.
Thursday, 19th—There is nothing new. We are still on picket on the main road to Beaufort.
Wednesday, 18th—The weather is very pleasant. We are still on duty guarding the main road to Beaufort. The trains have all gone in for supplies. All is quiet in front. This low country, before the war, was planted to cotton, the planters living in town while their plantations were managed by overseers and worked by slaves brought down from the border states. We can see rows of the vacant negro huts on these large plantations, set upon blocks so as to keep the floors dry. The negroes are all gone, being employed in the armies of both sections.[1]
[1] When I think of the vacant plantations I saw all through the South, when I recall the hardships of the negroes, and the different modes of punishment inflicted upon the slaves, all with the consent of the Southern people, then I can understand how they could be so cruel in their treatment of the Union prisoners of war. They put them in awful prison pens and starved them to death without a successful protest from the better class of the people of the South. The guards of these prisons had lived all their lives witnessing the cruel tortures of slaves; they had become hardened and thus had no mercy on an enemy when in their power. Many an Andersonvllle prisoner was shot down just for getting too close to an imaginary dead-line when suffering from thirst and trying to get a drink of water.
Not all Southerners were so cruel, for I lived in the same house with an ex-Confederate soldier from Georgia, when in southern Florida during the winter of 1911 and know that he had some feeling. He had been guard at Andersonvllle for a short time, and told me that he would have taken water to them by the bucketful, for he could not bear to hear the poor fellows calling for water; but that he did not dare to do it. This man’s name was McCain, and at the time I met him his home was at College Park, Atlanta, Ga.—A. G. D.
Tuesday, 17th—Our brigade was inspected at 1 p. m. today by the brigade commander. There is very little sickness among the men in spite of the fact that we have been in this low, flat country for a fortnight. The land where we are stationed is barely above the sea level, and we easily see the effect of the tide on the water of the inlet.
Monday, 16th—All is quiet in front. Company E moved back four or five miles to a large rebel fort on the main road to Beaufort, and on an inlet of the ocean. We are to remain here on picket duty until further orders. The main part of the regiment has fortified. Our company put up the “ranches” on a causeway.
Sunday, 15th—The rebels fell back last night and our men pushed forward this morning. We moved six miles and again went into camp. One regiment and the Thirteenth Iowa was left at Pocotaligo for picket duty and to act as train guard for the trains passing to and fro from Beaufort, hauling provisions out to the front for the army.
Saturday, 14th—Our army commenced to move at 7 this morning and by 10 o’clock the last detachment had crossed Broad river. We moved on about ten miles, driving the rebels and skirmishing with them all the way. The Iowa Brigade lost one man killed, a lieutenant of Company A, Fifteenth Iowa. The expedition consists of the Seventeenth Army Corps with General Foster’s command on our left.
