Very cool and comfortable for this season; marched about six
miles this morning and went into camp; have remained here all day and possibly
shall tonight; hope to at any rate for I am very tired and need rest; was
ordered back to take command of Company D this morning; am not much sorry for
the change for it's my Company. We are only a short distance from the James
river; can hear the steamboats whistle plainly. It does seem so good not
to hear musketry and picket firing, but from force of habit I hear both in my
sleep nights. Our army excepting the First and Third Divisions of our Corps
crossed the river here to-day on a pontoon bridge. It took one hundred pontoons
to construct the bridge which is held in place by large vessels at anchor above
and below the bridge, especially during the ebb and flow of the tide which is
about four feet. For the last ten miles before reaching here we passed through
a fine country and community with fine old plantations and houses surrounded
with lovely flowers and beautifully embowered.
SOURCE: Lemuel Abijah Abbott, Personal Recollections
and Civil War Diary, 1864, p. 82
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