Camp 103d Illinois
Infantry, Lagrange, Tenn.,
May 29, 1863.
’Tis becoming fiendishly warm in this latitude again; but
the delightfully cool nights of which I wrote you so much last summer, are also
here again, and amply repay one for the feverish days. We have moved our camp
from the town to a grove on a hill about midway between Grand Junction and
Lagrange It is one of the best defensive positions that I know of. It seems to
me much better than Corinth, or Columbus, Ky., or New Madrid. Our negro troops
are fortifying it. I suppose that no one anticipates danger from the
Confederates, on this line, any more; but I can understand that the stronger we
make our line, the less object the secesh will have in visiting us. We are
raising a regiment of blacks here. Captain Boynton, who has an Illinois Battery,
is to be the colonel. He looks like a good man, but I think that a better could
have been selected. I am afraid they are not commissioning the right material
for line officers. Two are to be taken from our regiment, and if we have two
men who are good for nothing under the sun, I believe them to be the ones. I
know that first rate men have applied for these places, and why they give them
to such worthless fellows, I can't see. I think poor Sambo should be allowed a
fair chance, and that he certainly will never get under worthless officers. I
suppose that the regiment organization here numbers some 800 now, and will soon
be full. I don't know whether I wrote it to you or not, but a year ago I
sincerely thought that if the negro was called into this war as a fighting
character, I would get out of it as quickly as I could, honorably. I am by no
means an enthusiast over the negro soldiers yet. I would rather fight the war
out without arming them. Would rather be a private in a regiment of whites than
an officer of negroes; but I don't pretend to set up my voice against what our
President says or does; and will cheerfully go down the Mississippi and forage
for mules, horses and negroes and put muskets in the hand's of the latter. I
have no trouble in believing that all these Rebels should lose every slave they
possess; and I experience some pleasure in taking them when ordered to. Captain
Bishop with some 25 men of Companies A and G did a splendid thing last Thursday
night. He surprised Saulstreet and 20 of his gang, about 11:30 p. m., killed
three, wounded and captured five and six sound prisoners, without losing one of
our men or getting one scratched. Three of the wounded guerrillas have since
died. Saulstreet himself escaped. Over at Henderson Station on the M. & O.
R. R. lives a Miss Sally Jones who once, when some Rebels set fire to a bridge
near there, watched them from the brush until they left and then extinguished
the fire. She is a case. Lieutenant Mattison saw her there a few days since.
The day before he saw her she had been out scouring over the country horseback,
dressed in boys' clothes, with her brother. She often goes out with the
soldiers scouting, and the boys think the world of her. Any of them would kill
a man who would dare insult her. She is, withal, a good girl. Not educated, but
of fine feelings and very pleasing manners. Memphis paper has just arrived. Not
a word from Vicksburg but a two column list of wounded. I expect that you have
celebrated the capture of that town, long before this. All right, you ought to
enjoy yourselves a little once in a while. There are now to my certain
knowledge, 20,000 troops on the railroad between Memphis and Corinth, and there
are not 1,000 armed Rebels within 100 miles of any point on the road. Our
presence at Vicksburg could not help deciding the day in our favor. It makes a
man who knows nothing about the matter, sick to think of the way we manage our
army. Hold 100,000 in reserve and fight with 10,000.
SOURCE: Charles Wright Wills, Army Life of an
Illinois Soldier, p. 176-7
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