23rd. Boys got started for forage, but orders came to march. Reached London at 9 A. M. Went into camp and boys went for forage. I stayed in. Got some corn and had good dinner. Boys got oats and fed till 5 P. M., then moved on as far as the Laurel River. Camped about [...]
Sunday, 23d–Our expedition broke camp this morning and started for Monroe, Louisiana, on the Washita river, seventy-five miles northwest of Vicksburg. By 1 o’clock we had covered ten miles, in a burning hot sun,[1] without water to drink, and through neglected fields of hemp standing from ten to fifteen feet high. The cavalry went in [...]
AUGUST 23d.—Dispatches from Charleston, yesterday, brought the melancholy intelligence that Fort Sumter is but little more than a pile of rubbish. The fall of this fort caused my wife a hearty cry—and she cried when Beauregard reduced it in 1861; not because he did it, but because it was the initiation of a terrible war. [...]