Three Years in the Confederate Horse Artillery — George Michael Neese.

September 12 —We had nothing to eat yesterday, and, contrary to general orders, our lieutenant told us last night that if we could find corn or potatoes that we might take enough to satisfy the requirements of the inner man. We soon found both corn and potatoes, twin brothers in diet that can be so happily devoured without bread. It is wonderful and almost inconceivable what an amount of corn and potatoes a soldier can engulf in his internal arrangements when they are properly adjusted by healthy, honest hunger after an all-day’s march without a morsel to check the shrinkage of his musculo-membranous reservoir. This morning we were ordered to Jefferson, a small village about twelve miles west of Frederick City. We moved slowly all day, crossed the Catoctin Mountain, which divides the Middletown Valley from the Frederick City country. We arrived at Jefferson a little before night. Jefferson is in the Middletown Valley and in a pretty country, but judging from the sourish frowns that played over the faces of the female population as we passed through the streets this evening the village must be strong Union in sentiment. However, I saw one bright-faced lady standing in her room before a window waving a white handkerchief at us as we passed, though she did it in a manner as not to be observed by her neighbors. Camped near Jefferson.