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

Monday, 1st–The weather is nice and warm today, as it has been for several weeks. A part of General Tuttle’s Division arrived in camp from some point up the river. The Crocker Brigade (Third Brigade of the Fourth Division of the Seventeenth Corps) received orders to prepare to go with the expedition, taking twenty days’ rations of hard-tack, salt, coffee and sugar. We are to start in the morning at daylight. Meridian is one hundred and sixty miles east of Vicksburg.