The Eleventh Iowa was mustered today for pay. The regiment
numbers about six hundred men present for duty, and but few are absent on
account of sickness. General McPherson is having his entire corps (the
Seventeenth) armed with new Springfield rifles, and our regiment today turned
over to the quartermaster the Enfield rifles and old accouterments to draw the
new rifles and accouterments. Most of the men feel that the Enfield rifle is
better suited to our use than the new one, for it has a bronze barrel, hence
easier to keep clean, as the outside does not require extra polishing.
I took a walk this afternoon over Cairo to view the town.
There is a great deal of building going on, even if it is one of the biggest
mudholes in the State of Illinois. The town may be said to be on stilts, for
the buildings rest on posts, ten or twelve feet from the ground, and of course
the sidewalks are the same. There are only two or three really nice buildings
in the town. But it is a very important place for our armies, as it is the
mobilizing point for our army on the Mississippi and the Tennessee rivers.
Source: Alexander G. Downing, Edited by Olynthus B.,
Clark, Downing’s Civil War Diary, p. 184
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