Wednesday Jan’y 15th
Nothing new in the City or from the army. More Cabinet changes talked of, and I think necessary. Julia had letter from Mrs Dr Barnes of the 27th Regt. She has been staying in Camp for the last ten weeks living in a tent. She also had a letter from Miss Mirrick of Lyons. It has been a cold unpleasant day, freezing until near night with a misty sleet falling all day. The ground is covered with snow, tonight it thaws and the snow & water on the ground render “rubbers” an absolute necessity. What the poor soldiers do it is hard to tell [in] this kind of weather. There is an immense amount of sickness in the City now among citizens. Small pox & Typhoid fever are both prevailing to a great extent. The mortality in the Military Hospitals is very great, forty or fifty pr day are carried off to their long homes. Bad management I fear there.
______
The three diary manuscript volumes, Washington during the Civil War: The Diary of Horatio Nelson Taft, 1861-1865, are available online at The Library of Congress.
