Near LaFayette, Ga., 12
m., May 7, 1864.
Have just got into camp and washed my face. Four divisions
filing into the road ahead of us, delayed us five whole hours, and their trains
have made us seven hours marching 8 miles. Somebody says we are 19 miles from
Rome. The boys have started a new dodge on the citizens. One of my men told me
of playing it last night. When we camped for the night he went to a house and
inquiring about the neighbors found out one who had relatives North; and
something of the family history. Then he called on this party and represented
himself as belonging to the northern branch of the family, got to kiss the
young lady cousins, had a pleasant time generally, and returned with his
haversack full of knicknacks, and the pictures of his cousins, with whom he had
promised to correspond. At one house on the road to-day 10 or 12 women had
congregated to see the troops pass. An officer stopped at the house just as our
regiment came up, and the boys commenced yelling at him, “Come out of that,
Yank;” you could have heard them two miles. Never saw a man so mortified.
Colonel Wright tells me we are about seven miles from the Rebels at some ridge.
We will get into position to-morrow and fight next day — that is, they would,
if I were not present. We camped in a “whale” of a sweet potato patch, and the
boys have about dug up the seed and gobbled it.
SOURCE: Charles Wright Wills, Army Life of an
Illinois Soldier, p. 236
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