Tuesday, February 24, 2015

Diary of Corporal Alexander G. Downing: Tuesday, April 26, 1864

We stopped at Centralia this morning for breakfast, and arrived at Cairo about 5 o'clock in the evening. Our regiment received new tents, and marching up the Ohio, we went with our non-veteran comrades into camp just above Cairo. There are about twenty thousand troops in camp at this place, and a large expedition is being fitted out here, to start in a few days, but there is no certainty as to where it is going.1 Most of the Seventeenth Army Corps is camped here awaiting orders. It is being reorganized and fitted out with Springfield rifles and cartridge boxes.
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1 The expedition was fitted out for the campaign against Atlanta, under the command of General Sherman. — A. G. D.

Source: Alexander G. Downing, Edited by Olynthus B., Clark, Downing’s Civil War Diary, p. 183

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