We received orders to be ready to march early in the morning
for Memphis. The report in camp is that we are to go on down the Mississippi
river. The Fourth Brigade of the Third Division came in at 5 o'clock in the
evening and relieved our brigade. A detail from the Eighty-first Illinois
Infantry furnished the picket guards to relieve our post where I was on guard
with Corporal McBirney and Privates John Esher and George Eicher, all of my
company. We are all glad to leave this place, as it is low, damp and unhealthy,
which with the smallpox makes it a bad camp.
Source: Alexander G. Downing, Edited by Olynthus B.,
Clark, Downing’s Civil War Diary, p. 93
