Diary of 1st Lieutenant Daniel L. Ambrose: December 20, 1864

After the fall of Fort McAllister, we obtain some supplies, but for the seventy thousand hungry soldiers they soon run out. For the last week the troops have been subsisting upon corn and rice, the rice being obtained from the shocks in the swamps, and hulled out by the soldiers. Everything in the country for fifty miles around has been foraged. The army is still investing Savannah—the siege still going on. It will be over soon however, as a great battle will be fought where Count Pulaski's Monument stands; for Sherman's army is now in a good condition to sweep Savannah from the earth. The next forty-eight hours will tell the tale.

SOURCE: Daniel Leib Ambrose, History of the Seventh Regiment Illinois Volunteer Infantry, p. 286

Diary of 1st Lieutenant Daniel L. Ambrose: December 24, 1864

We are ordered to Fort Brown, two miles from the city, where we go into a more permanent camp. During our first days at Savannah, the Seventh's boys are seen strolling everywhere, viewing the fortifications and the great guns; they are also seen pacing the streets of the beautiful city, looking with admiration upon her gorgeous buildings, and standing in awe in the shade of the peerless monument reared by a generous people to that noble Pole, Count Pulaski, who fought, bled and died in America's first revolution for independence. Can it be that traitors have walked around its base and sworn that the great Union for which this grand and liberal spirit sacrificed his life should be consigned to the wrecks of dead empires? As we stand and gaze upon this marble cenotaph, we are constrained to say, Oh! wicked men, why stood ye here above the dust of Poland's martyr, seeking to defame his name and tear down what he helped to rear! May God pity America's erring ones! In our wanderings we are made to stop, by an acre enclosed with a high but strong palisade, the work of Colonel G. F. Wiles, Seventy-eighth Ohio Veteran Volunteer Infantry, commanding Second Brigade, Third Division, Seventeenth Army Corps, and his gallant command. This is God's acre and liberty's, and emphatically can this be said, for here three hundred or more of our fallen comrades sleep death's silent sleep. Here in trenches, unknelled, uncoffined, but not alone, "life's fitful fever over," they sleep well.

They fell not in the deadly breach, nor yet on the grassy plain. For them no choir of musketry rattled, no anthem of cannon rolled, but unclad and unfed, their lamps of life flickered out in that worse than Egyptian bondage—a Confederate prison. For long weary months they suffered and waited for the time to come when they would inhale freedom's pure air; for long weary nights they watched the signal lights as they flashed upwards from the monitors to guide Sherman through the wilderness of pines, down to the sea; long did they wait to see the sunlight from the waters flash on his serried lines, but he came not. They suffered on, and died-died martyrs upon the altar of human freedom; died that not one single star, however wayward, should be erased from the Union's great banner of freedom. Has the world, in all its history of blood, from the creation to the christian era, from the reformation to the revolution, ever produced examples of such heroic endurance as this second revolution has given to the world? Echoes coming from the soft south winds that sweep along the Atlantic shore, answer no. These men were murdered! Yes, murdered because they wore the blue, and fought for the flag and freedom. The poet alludes most touchingly to an incident that caused the murder of one of these lonely sleepers who plead for his wife's letters.

"First pay the postage, whining wretch."

Despair had made the prisoner brave-

"I'm a captive, not a slave;

You took my money and my clothes,

Take my life too, but for the love of God

Let me know how Mary and the children are,

And I will bless you ere I go."

This plea proved fruitless, and across the dead-line the soldier passed, and soon a bullet passed through his brain, and his crushed spirit was free with God. What a sad picture.

We remember when we stood there and gazed upon that hallowed acre of God's and liberty's. We thought of those wicked men who whelmed this land into those dark nights of war; who told us then that the Union soldier died in vain; that the names of those uncoffined sleepers there would be forgotten and unsung, and as my comrades and myself stood there revolving these thoughts in our minds, we vowed over those graves, before heaven, to be the enemies of traitors. "Died in vain! sacrificed their lives for naught! their names to be forgotten and unsung!" Who uttered those words in application to the noble sleepers there? Who spoke thus to the weeping mother and stricken sister? Traitors in the North! Traitors on the legislative floors uttered these words! We speak the sentiment of the Seventh when we say that we would not take millions for what we hate these men, contemptible in nature, pusillanimous in soul, with hearts as black as the "steeds of night." Like Brownlow, were we not afraid of springing a theological question, we would say that better men have been going down with the wailing hosts for the last eighteen hundred years.

A few days after going into camp at Fort Brown, Major Johnson is ordered with Companies A, H and K, to proceed down the river to Bonniventure, about five miles from Savannah. Arriving, we take up our quarters in the old Bonniventure mansion, a fashionable resort for the chivalry in the days that have flown. During our stay here we live chiefly on oysters, which are obtained in great abundance by the boys. Major Johnson and his detachment will not soon forget how they gamboled and loitered beneath the shades of those live oaks down by the great Atlantic's shore.

The Seventh remains in camp at Fort Brown and Bonniventure until the latter part of January, 1865. In the mean time Captain Norton, with the mounted portion of the regiment, was ordered across the Savannah river into South Carolina, joining Howard's command at Pocataligo.

SOURCE: Daniel Leib Ambrose, History of the Seventh Regiment Illinois Volunteer Infantry, p. 290-93

Diary of William Howard Russell: April 29, 1861

This morning up at six, A.M., bade farewell to our hostess and Barnwell Island, and proceeded with Trescot back to the Pocotaligo station, which we reached at 12:20. On our way Mr. Heyward and his son rode out of a field, looking very like a couple of English country squires in all but hats and saddles. The young gentleman was good enough to bring over a snake-hawk he had shot for me. At the station, to which the Heywards accompanied us, were the Elliotts and others, who had come over with invitations and adieux; and I beguiled the time to Savannah reading the very interesting book by Mr. Elliott, senior, on the Wild Sports of Carolina, which was taken up by some one when I left the carriage for a moment and not returned to me. The country through which we passed was flat and flooded as usual, and the rail passed over dark deep rivers on lofty trestle-work, by pine wood and dogwood-tree, by the green plantation clearing, with mud bank, dike, and tiny canal mile by mile, the train stopping for the usual freight of ladies, and negro nurses, and young planters, all very much of the same class, till at three o'clock, P. M., the cars rattled up along-side a large shed, and we were told we had arrived at Savannah.

Here was waiting for me Mr. Charles Green, who had already claimed me and my friend as his guests, and I found in his carriage the young American designer, who had preceded me from Charleston, and had informed Mr. Green of my coming.

The drive through such portion of Savannah as lay between the terminus and Mr. Green's house, soon satisfied my eyes that it had two peculiarities. In the first place, it had the deepest sand in the streets I have ever seen; and next, the streets were composed of the most odd, quaint, green-windowed, many-colored little houses I ever beheld, with an odd population of lean, sallow, ill-dressed unwholesome-looking whites, lounging about the exchanges and corners, and a busy, well-clad, gayly-attired race of negroes, working their way through piles of children, under the shade of the trees which bordered all the streets. The fringe of green, and the height attained by the live-oak, Pride of India, and magnolia, give a delicious freshness and novelty to the streets of Savannah, which is increased by the great number of squares and openings covered with something like sward, fenced round by white rail, and embellished with noble trees to be seen at every few hundred yards. It is difficult to believe you are in the midst of a city, and I was repeatedly reminded of the environs of a large Indian cantonment — the same kind of churches and detached houses, with their plantations and gardens not unlike. The wealthier classes, however, have houses of the New York Fifth Avenue character: one of the best of these, a handsome mansion of rich red-sandstone, belonged to my host, who coming out from England many years ago, raised himself by industry and intelligence to the position of one of the first merchants in Savannah. Italian statuary graced the hall; finely carved tables and furniture, stained glass, and pictures from Europe set forth the sitting-rooms; and the luxury of bath-rooms and a supply of cold fresh water, rendered it an exception to the general run of Southern edifices. Mr. Green drove me through the town, which impressed me more than ever with its peculiar character. We visited Brigadier-General Lawton, who is charged with the defences of the place against the expected Yankees, and found him just setting out to inspect a band of volunteers, whose drums we heard in the distance, and whose bayonets were gleaming through the clouds of Savannah dust, close to the statue erected to the memory of one Pulaski, a Pole, who was mortally wounded in the unsuccessful defence of the city against the British in the War of Independence. He turned back and led us into his house. The hall was filled with little round rolls of flannel. “These,” said he, “are cartridges for cannon of various calibres, made by the ladies of Mrs. Lawton's ‘cartridge class.’” There were more cartridges in the back parlor, so that the house was not quite a safe place to smoke a cigar in. The General has been in the United States' army, and has now come forward to head the people of this State in their resistance to the Yankees.

We took a stroll in the park, and I learned the news of the last few days. The people of the South, I find, are delighted at a snubbing which Mr. Seward has given to Governor Hicks of Maryland, for recommending the arbitration of Lord Lyons, and he is stated to have informed Governor Hicks that “our troubles could not be referred to foreign arbitration, least of all to that of the representative of a European monarchy." The most terrible accounts are given of the state of things in Washington. Mr. Lincoln consoles himself for his miseries by drinking. Mr. Seward follows suit. The White House and capital are full of drunken border ruffians, headed by one Jim Lane, of Kansas. But, on the other hand, the Yankees, under one Butler, a Massachusetts lawyer, have arrived at Annapolis, in Maryland, secured the “Constitution” man-of-war, and are raising masses of men for the invasion of the South all over the States. The most important thing, as it strikes me, is the proclamation of the Governor of Georgia, forbidding citizens to pay any money on account of debts due to Northerners, till the end of the war. General Robert E. Lee has been named Commander-in-Chief of the Forces of the Commonwealth of Virginia, and troops are flocking to that State from Alabama and other States. Governor Ellis has called out 30,000 volunteers in North Carolina, and Governor Rector of Arkansas has seized the United States' military stores at Napoleon. There is a rumor that Fort Pickens has been taken also, but it is very probably untrue. In Texas and Arkansas the United States regulars have not made an attempt to defend any of the forts.

In the midst of all this warlike work, volunteers drilling, bands playing, it was pleasant to walk in the shady park, with its cool fountains, and to see the children playing about — many of them, alas! “playing at soldiers” — in charge of their nurses. Returning, sat in the veranda and smoked a cigar; but the mosquitoes were very keen and numerous. My host did not mind them, but my cuticle will never be sting-proof.

SOURCE: William Howard Russell, My Diary North and South, p. 149-151