January 1, 1865 — This is Happy New Year. A cold northwest wind is sweeping through camp in a regular hurricane style, with all the fierceness and chilliness of a midwinter tempest.
To commence the new year with an inauspicious outlook we drew but half rations to-day. All of us in our tent went to bed at noon to keep from freezing; at sunset we got up and stood out in ranks and shiveringly answered evening roll-call, then went back to bed to spend the remainder of this Happy New Year in trying to have pleasant dreams of some warm, steaming, delicious New Year dinner somewhere far, far away. On Christmas Day a hungry Alabamian ate five pounds of raw bacon and six pounds of bread in one sitting, at the commissary department of this prison. The poor fellow was a large man and no doubt had been hungry a long time, but the enormous bulk that he stowed away was too much for his unused digestive apparatus, and it partially failed to respond to the abrupt overfeeding process, which sent the man to the hospital, where he eventually died from the effects of his little Christmas dinner.
