Diary of Corporal Alexander G. Downing: Tuesday, October 25, 1864

Still lying in camp. The supply train of the Fifteenth Army Corps returned with rations late this evening, but the supply train of the Seventeenth Corps has not yet come in. It is reported that the army of the Tennessee is going on a march of four hundred miles. The route is supposed to be down through the States of Alabama and Mississippi and then up through to Memphis, Tennessee.¹ We are to take rations for thirty days and clothing for sixty days. The armies of the Ohio and of the Cumberland, it is said, are to garrison Atlanta² and also to hold the railroad between Atlanta and Nashville. The Twenty-third Army Corps moved out today to Cedar Bluffs.

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¹ This was the first hint at “marching through Georgia,” but the camp rumor had it Alabama and Mississippi. — Ed.

² We learned later that it was Chattanooga instead of Atlanta, and that the two armies were to be united under the command of General Thomas. — A. G. D.

Source: Alexander G. Downing, Edited by Olynthus B., Clark, Downing’s Civil War Diary, p. 224