Left camp at Smith's
Fork, DeKalb Co., Tenn., and marched five miles from this camp to Orbenstown,
bringing with us many of the Union families of this county, whose whitened locks
and old age, wealth and respectable appearance would make a heart, although it
was as hard as stone, melt to look upon them, as they were compelled to leave
their birth-place, and all that was near and dear to them, and flee from them
to our protection and safety, to escape the jaws and clutches of those traitors
of so desperate a character, in their old age, and robbed of their sweet homes
and everything, in all probability for ever and ever, by those notorious
scoundrel secesh or rebel traitors, as you or any other one may see proper to
term them — for no hand can write, or artist paint, or tongue tell, the
sufferings of the Union families in the Southern States, that fall into the
jaws of those hellish fiends. You will please excuse me for setting forth these
hard spelled words, for I can not help it, when thinking of the sufferings of
our poor Union soldiers and many Union families. So our march was continued
this same day to Milton battle-ground, a march of 16 miles.
SOURCE: Adam S.
Johnston, The Soldier Boy's Diary Book, pp. 29-30
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