Downing’s Civil War Diary.–Alexander G. Downing.

Saturday, 6th–I was on duty today with a foraging party of our division, to help load the wagons with corn and cotton. We brought in seventy-five loads of cotton worth about $40,000. At one plantation some negroes were out at work picking cotton, while others were baling it in the gin houses, but we drove into the houses and loaded up without asking for the privilege. The Sixth Division almost every day brings in from seventy-five to one hundred loads of corn or cotton. This part of the state is thickly settled and the settlements are rich, there being a great deal of corn and cotton.