Diary of Private W. J. Davidson, January 16, 1863

After a very cold night spent in sleeplessness, I arose, determined to have something better to eat than our daily ration of coarse meal and poor beef, supplemented occasionally with a little sugar and molasses. I procured a permit from Captain Feeney, which was duly approved by Colonel Tillman, but could not pass the pickets on it: had to return a short distance and go around them, which was no easy job, considering the topography of the country. After cooning logs over the same crooked little stream some half dozen times, we (Arch Conaway and myself) found ourselves in a dense canebrake, and then in the midst of an impassable swamp. Being lost, we struck out straight ahead, and finally came to a farm-house; asked if we could purchase any potatoes, pork, or butter, and were told "nary tater;" pushed on to the second house, and the same question asked, and the same answer returned; ditto at the third house and the fourth started on return; found an aged colored individual, who agreed to steal us a small hog at night for the small consideration of ten dollars and a half. No help for it. Must have a change of diet. [A story is told of a soldier in this regiment, when at Port Hudson, which is appropriate in this connection. He, like our author, needed a "change of diet," and slipped into a farmer's hog-pen one night to get it. He saw, what appeared to him, a fine large porker, lying fast asleep, and with practiced skill approached and knocked it in the head with his axe. On attempting to turn it over he found his game had been dead three or four days.]

SOURCE: Edwin L. Drake, Editor, The Annals of the Army of Tennessee and Early Western History, Vol. 1, p. 20-1