Camp 103d Illinois
Infantry, Lagrange, Tenn.,
April 24, '63.
We have just returned from the hardest and yet by far the
most pleasant scout in which I have up to this time participated. We started
from here one week ago to-day, Friday, and my birthday (how old I am getting)
on the cars. We were four and a half regiments of infantry, one six-gun battery
and no cavalry. At 3 o'clock p. m. we were within seven miles of Holly Springs
and found two bridges destroyed. We worked that p. m. and night and finished
rebuilding the bridges by daylight the 18th. We had only moved two miles
further when we reached another bridge which we found lying around loose in the
bed of the stream. The general concluded to abandon the railroad at this point,
so we took up the line of march. We passed through Holly Springs at 12 m. I
don't believe that I saw a human face in the town. A more complete scene of
desolation cannot be imagined. We bivouacked at dark, at Lumpkin's mill, only
one mile from Waterford. At 9 p. m. a dreadful wind and rain storm commenced
and continued until 1. We were on cleared ground, without tents, and well fixed
to take a good large share of both the wind and water. I'm positive that I got
my full portion. 'Twas dark as dark could be, but by the lightning flashes, we
could see the sticks and brush with which we fed our fire, and then we would
feel through the mud in the right direction. Nearly half the time we had to
hold our rubber blankets over the fire to keep the rain from pelting it out.
After the storm had subsided I laid down on a log with my face to the stars,
bracing myself with one foot on each side of my bed. I awoke within an hour to
find that a little extra rain on which I had not counted, had wet me to the
skin. That ended my sleeping for that night.
Nineteenth. — We went down to Waterford and then turned
westward, which course we held until nearly to Chulahoma. When we again turned
southward and reached the Tallahatchie river at "Wyatt," where we
camped for the night. Our regiment was on picket that night and an awful cold
night it was. We marched through deep, yellow mud the 19th nearly all day, but
I don't know that I marched any harder for it. Up at 3 o'clock and started at
4, the 20th, and marched 25 miles southwest, along the right bank of the Tallahatchie.
Our rations were out by this time and we were living off the
"citizens." The quartermaster with a squad of men he had mounted on
contraband horses and mules would visit the chivalric planters, take their
wagons, load them with their hams, meal and flour, and when we would halt for
dinner or supper, issue the chivalries' eatables to us poor miserable Yankees.
While the quartermaster attended to these principal items the "boys"
would levy on the chickens, etc., including milk and cornbread. Gen. W. S.
Smith commanded and the butternuts failed to get much satisfaction from him.
The first night out a "citizen" came to him and complained that the
soldiers had killed nine of his hogs, and asked what he should do to get his
pay. "My dear sir," said the general, "you'll have to go to the
boys about this matter, they will arrange it satisfactorily to you, I have no
doubt." “Citizen” didn't go to the boys though. Another one came to ask
pay for his hams. "Your hams, why everything in this Mississippi belongs
to these boys, a great mistake, that of your's, sir." The men soon found
out what kind of a general they had and whenever a butternut would appear among
us they would greet him with a perfect storm of shouts of, "here’s your
ham, here's your chicken," etc., and often a shower of bones of hams or
beef would accompany the salute. On the 20th the general decided to make some
cavalry, and on the 21st at night we had nearly 400 men on "pressed"
horses and mules. These soldiers would just mount anything that had four legs,
from a ram to an elephant, and the falls that some of the wild mules gave the
boys would have made any man laugh that had life enough in him to breathe. How
the women would beg for a favorite horse! I saw as many as five women wringing
their hands and crying around a little cream-colored mare on whose head a
soldier was arranging a rope bridle as coolly as though he was only going to
lead her to water. You could have heard those women a quarter of a mile begging
that cuss of an icicle to leave the pony, and he paid no more attention to them
than he would have done to so many little chickens. An officer made the man
leave the animal and I think the women took her in the house. I saw two girls,
one of them perfectly lovely, begging for a pair of mules and a wagon a
quartermaster was taking from their place. They pushed themselves in the way so
much that the men could hardly hitch the animals to the wagon. But we had to
take that team to haul our provisions. The night of the 20th at 8 o'clock, the
general called all the officers up to his quarters and told us that we would
have a fight with General Chalmers before breakfast the next morning. He
ordered all the fires put out immediately and gave us our instructions for
defense in case we should be attacked during the night. After he was through I,
with eight other officers, was notified that we should sit at once as a court
martial to try the adjutant of the 99th Indiana, for straggling and conduct
unbecoming an officer and a gentleman in taking from a house sundry silver
spoons, forks, etc. I'll tell you our sentence after it is approved. That kept
us until 11 o'clock. At 1 o'clock a. m. we were wakened without bugles or
drums, stood under arms, without fires until 3, and then marched northwest. At
this point we were only eight or nine miles from Panola, Miss. We marched along
through Sardis on the Grenada and Memphis R. R. and northwest about 15 miles to
some cross roads, which we reached just 20 minutes after the Rebels had left.
'Twas useless for our infantry to follow their mounted men, so we turned
homeward with 75 miles before us. Just look over and see how much sleep I got
in the last four nights. We marched through the most delightful country from
the time we left Wyatt. I think it will almost compare favorably with Illinois.
We saw thousands of acres of wheat headed out which will be ready to harvest by
the 15th or 20th of May. Some of the rye was as tall as I am. Peaches as large
as filberts and other vegetation in proportion. There seemed to be a plenty of
the necessaries of life, but I can assure you that eatables are not so
plentiful now as they were before we visited the dear brethren. We reached the
railroad at Colliersville last night. That is 26 miles west, making in all some
175 miles in eight days. The guerrillas fired on one column a number of times
but hurt no one until yesterday, when they killed two of the 6th Iowa, which
regiment was on another road from ours, the latter part of the trip. We took
only some 20 prisoners but about 400 horses and mules. They captured about a
dozen of stragglers from us and I am sorry to say two from my company, Wilson
Gray and Stephen Hudson. The last three days we marched, every time that we
would halt ten minutes one-fourth of the men would go to sleep. You should have
seen the boys make bread after their crackers gave out; some lived on mush and
meal, others baked cornbread in cornshucks, some would mix the dough and roll
it on a knotty stick and bake it over the fire. It was altogether lots of fun
and I wouldn't have missed the trip for anything.
SOURCE: Charles Wright Wills, Army Life of an
Illinois Soldier, p. 171-4
