September 25th, 1863.—The telegraph wires are up and working again and the news we get is both encouraging and distressing. A great victory has been won at Chickamauga, but at such a fearful loss of life. It is said to be as bloody a battle as Gettysburg and it lasted three days, beginning on the nineteenth of this month.
We have such glorious news of the courage displayed by Gen. Finley’s Florida Brigade. They are in Longstreet’s Corps and they formed the entering wedge, which broke Thomas’s line; they charged with the bayonet three times with dreadful loss, before Thomas gave way. It is grand, it is heroic, but oh, those poor boys and their wives and mothers! Sometimes I am glad I have no real, true brothers for wouldn’t I love them just a little better than these I have?
Susan Bradford is 17 years old when this entry was made.