May 23, 1864.
Weather is getting very hot. We have made 21 miles today,
and the distance, heat and dust have made it by far the hardest march we have
had for a year. Excepting about six miles of dense pine woods the country we
have passed through has been beautiful, quite rolling, but fertile and well
improved. In the midst of the pine woods we stopped to rest at Hollis' Mill, a
sweet looking little 17-year old lady here told me she was and always had been
Union, and that nearly all the poor folks here are Union. In answer to some
questions about the roads and country, she said, “Well, now, I was born and
raised right here, and never was anywhere, and never see anybody, and I just
don't know anything at all.”
I never saw so many stragglers as to-day. For 12 miles no
water was to be had; then we came to a spring, a very large one, say 4 or 5
hogsheads a minute. All the officers in the army could not have kept the men in
ranks. Saw no cases of sunstroke, but two of my men from heat turned blue with
rush of blood to the head, and had to leave the ranks. Some think we are moving
on Montgomery, Ala. Our orders say we need not hope for railroad communications
for 20 days; I think that Atlanta is our point, although we were 50 miles from
there this morning and 60 to-night. The planters in this country own thousands
of negroes, and they've run them all off down this road. They are about two
days ahead of us, and the poor people say as thick on the road as we are. Have passed
several to-day who escaped from their masters.
Four miles southeast of Van Wirt, Ga.,
SOURCE: Charles Wright Wills, Army Life of an
Illinois Soldier, p. 245-6
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