Diary of John Beauchamp Jones: January 28, 1864

The beautiful, pleasant weather continues.

It is said Congress passed, last night, in secret session, the bill allowing increased compensation to civil officers and employees. Mr. Davidson, of fifty years of age, resigned,, to-day, his clerkship in the War Department, having been offered $5000 by one of the incorporated companies to travel and buy supplies for it.

Mr. Hubbard, of Alabama, suggests to the Secretary to buy 500,000 slaves, and give one to every soldier enlisting from beyond our present lines, at the end of the war. He thinks many from the border free States would enlist on our side. The Secretary does not favor the project.

Gen. Whiting writes for an order for two locomotive boilers, at Montgomery, Ala., for his torpedo-boats, now nearly completed. He says he intends to attack the blockading squadron off Wilmington.

The weather is still warm and beautiful. The buds are swelling.

SOURCE: John Beauchamp Jones, A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital, Volume 2, p. 137-8

Lieutenant-General Winfield Scott to Major-General Robert Patterson, April 29, 1861

Headquarters of the Army, WASHINGTON, April 29th, 1861

Maj. Gen. PATTERSON

SIR: I wrote to you by Major Porter on the 27th, and also sent by him certain verbal messages. In that letter I gave you the outline of my plan for taking and strongly occupying Baltimore, and I asked for your views on the subject. At present, I suppose a column from this place of three thousand men, and another from York of three thousand men, a third from Perryville or Elkton by land or water, or both, of three thousand, & a fourth from Annapolis, by water, of three thousand, might suffice. But it may be, and many persons think it probable, that Baltimore, before we can get ready, will reopen the communication through that city, and beyond, each way, for troops, army supplies, and travellers, voluntarily. When can we be ready for the movement upon Baltimore on this side? Col. Mansfield has satisfied me that we want at least 10,000 (ten thousand) additional troops here to give security to this Capital, and as yet, we have less than 10,000, including some very indifferent militia of the District. With that addition we will be able, I think, to make the detachment for Baltimore. The Secretary tells me that he has sent a party, not military, to repair the bridges and relay the Maryland part of the Harrisburg & Baltimore railroad, to a point near the City. This, I am sure cannot be done without the protection of a Military force. I wish you to look to this. I am not sure that either you or Brig. Gen’l. Butler has re-inforced Ft. McHenry. I suppose 250 or 500 men will be wanted, if it be not already reinforced. If he is with you send Major W. W. Morris there to command. I shall ask General Butler to send up the men that may be yet needed. I desired Major Porter, A. A. G., to obtain from you or the Gov. of Pennsylvania the means of building two bridges on the Balt. & Ohio R.R. somewhere below Frederick; but pause a few days for further instructions, as we may want to use that road in taking possession of Harper's Ferry. We are in great want of Camp equipage and accoutrements at Annapolis, I believe, & certainly here; & we have occupied all the shelter for troops to be found here. Therefore please send no more troops this way without Camp equipage. The cabinet have under consideration, a plan for Volunteers of a long period of service. Please therefore to withdraw your request addressed to the Governor of Pennsylvania to increase his quota of three-months men. Tell me what you can do, and when, toward seizing and occupying Baltimore. The Quarter Master in Philadelphia has two hundred wagons, and thinks he can obtain as many more in ten or fifteen days. Four locomotives and ten passenger cars have been ordered from New York for service on this side of Annapolis. With high respect,

Yours very trully,

WINFIELD SCOTT

P.S. Occupy Havre de Grace at your discretion. I think well of the proposition.

WINFIELD SCOTT

SOURCE: Jessie Ames Marshall, Editor, Private and Official Correspondence of Gen. Benjamin F. Butler During the Period of the Civil War, Volume 1: April 1860 – June 1862, p. 55-7

Diary of John Beauchamp Jones: August 31, 1863

Governor Vance writes that large bodies of deserters in the western counties of North Carolina are organized, with arms, and threaten to raise the Union flag at the courthouse of Wilkes County on next court-day. The Governor demands a brigade from Virginia to quell them. Lieut.-Col. Lay has been sent thither, by the new good-natured chief of the Bureau of Conscription, to cure the evil. We shall see what good this mission will effect. Col. Preston writes to the Secretary to-day that disorders among the conscripts and deserters are now occurring in South Carolina for the first time — and proposes shortly to visit them himself. The best thing that can be done is to abolish the Bureau of Conscription, and have the law enforced by the military commanders in the field.

I saw to-day a letter to the Secretary of War, written by Mr. Benjamin, Secretary of State, on the 18th inst., referring to a Mr. Jno. Robertson, an artist, whom the Secretary of War promised a free passage in a government steamer to Europe. Mr. B. says the promise was made in the President's room, and he asks if Mr. Seddon could not spare an hour in his office, for Mr. R. to take his portrait. He says Mr. R. has the heads of the President, all the heads of departments (except Mr. Seddon, I suppose), and the principal generals. It does not appear what was done by Mr. Seddon, but I presume everything asked for by Mr. Benjamin was granted. But this matter has not exalted the President and his “heads of departments” in my estimation. If it be not “fiddling while Rome is burning,” it is certainly egotizing while the Confederacy is crumbling. On that day Sumter was falling to pieces, and some 40 locomotives and hundreds of cars were burning in Mississippi, and everywhere our territory passing into the hands of the invader!

Mr. Robertson, I believe, is a stranger and an Englishman, and a free passage in a government ship is equivalent to some $2000, Confederate States currency. Almost every day passages are denied to refugees, natives of the South, who have lost fortunes in the cause, and who were desirous to place their children and non-combatants in a place of security, while they fight for liberty and independence. The privileged passage is refused them, even when they are able and willing to pay for the passage, and this refusal is recommended by Col. Gorgas, a Northern man. They do not propose to immortalize “the President, the heads of departments, and the principal generals.” But Mr. Benjamin has nothing else to do. Washington would accept no meed of praise until his great work was accomplished.

SOURCE: John Beauchamp Jones, A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital, Volume 2, p. 28-9

Abraham Lincoln to Edwin M. Stanton, April 4, 1865 – 8 a.m.

CITY POINT, VA., April 4, 1865 — 8 a.m.*

(Received 8.45 a.m.)

Hon. EDWIN M. STANTON,

Secretary of War:

General Weitzel telegraphs from Richmond that of railroad stock he found there 28 locomotives, 44 passenger and baggage cars, and 106 freight cars. At 3.30 this evening General Grant, from Sutherland's Station, ten miles from Petersburg toward Burkeville, telegraphs as follows:

General Sheridan picked up 1,200 prisoners to-day, and from 300 to 500 more have been gathered by other troops. The majority of the arms that were left in the hands of the remnant of Lee's army are now scattered between Richmond and where his troops are. The country is also full of stragglers; the line of retreat marked with artillery, ammunition, burned or charred wagons, caissons, ambulances, &c.

 A. LINCOLN.

_______________

* Probably written before midnight of April 3.

SOURCE: The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Series I Volume 46, Part 3 (Serial No. 97), p. 544-5

Captain Charles Wright Wills: March 15, 1863

Camp 103d Illinois Infantry, Lagrange, Tenn.,

March 15, 1863.

I have just returned from a walk to and inspection of the cemetery belonging to this nice little town. There, as everywhere, the marks of the “Vandal Yankees” are visible. The fence which formerly enclosed the whole grounds has long since vanished in thin air, after fulfilling its mission, boiling Yankee coffee, and frying Yankee bacon. Many of the enclosures of family grounds have also suffered the same fate, and others are broken down and destroyed. The cemeteries here are full of evergreens, hollies, cedars, and dwarf pines, and rosebushes and flowers of all kinds are arranged in most excellent taste. They pride themselves more on the homes of their dead than on the habitations of the living. I can't help thinking that their dead are the most deserving of our respect, though our soldiers don't waste much respect on either the living or dead chivalries. Many of the graves have ocean shells scattered over them, and on a number were vases in which the friends deposit boquets in the flower season. The vases have suffered some at the hands of the Yankees, and the names of Yanks anxious for notoriety are penciled thickly on the backs of marble grave stones. Quite a variety of flowers can now be found here in bloom. I have on my table some peach blossoms and one apple blossom, the first of the latter I have seen. Some of the early rosebushes are leaved out, and the grass is up enough to make the hillsides look quite springlike. For three or four days we have needed no fire, and my coat now hangs on the forked stick which answers for a hatrack in my tent. We left Jackson the morning of the 11th, all pleased beyond expression, to get away. We were from 8 a. m. until 11 o'clock p. m. coming here, only 55 miles. The engine stalled as many as ten times on up grades, and we would either have to run back to get a fresh start, or wait until a train came along whose engine could help us out. We lay loosely around the depot until daylight and then moved out to our present camp, which is one of the best I have ever seen, a nice, high ridge covered with fine old forest trees. This town has been most shamefully abused since we left here with the Grand Army last December. There are only about three houses which have a vestige of a fence left around them. All the once beautiful evergreens look as though three or four tornadoes had visited them and many of the finest houses have been compelled to pay as tribute to the camp fires, piazzas and weatherboarding. Not a chicken is left to crow or cackle, not a pig to squeal, and only such milch cows as were composed entirely of bone and cuticle. The 7th Cavalry is here, and also the 6th Illinois and 2d Iowa. There is only one other regiment of Infantry, the 46th Ohio. It does the picket duty and we are patroling and guarding the government stores. The duty is rather lighter than it was in Jackson, and more pleasant. We have no ground to complain now, and the paymaster is all we want to make us perfectly happy. Two nights before we left Jackson 23 of our regiment deserted, 17 of whom were out of Company A, one of the Lewistown companies. One was from my company, the first deserter I have had. He was detailed from Company A to my company and was besides the most worthless trifling pup in the army. I am accepting the disgrace of having one of my men desert, decidedly glad to be rid of him. Johnny Wyckoff came down a few days ago and after being in camp a few days came to me and said he had his parents' permission, so I got the colonel to swear him in. We'll make a drummer of him.

I suppose you will have seen in the Register before this reaches you the answer my company made to that Davidson's lie in regard to our vote on the resolutions. I did not see the paper until it was ready to send away. I think copperheadism is not worth quite the premium it was a few months since. These notes from the army should have some weight with the gentlemen that run the copper machine. Do you see how the Southern papers cut the scoundrels? That does me much good, though 'tis mortifying to think we have such dirt-catchers in our State.

Well, we are on the right track now, and a few more weeks and we will be steaming down the Mississippi, I think. Our next move will be Memphis, probably, and then, ho! for Vicksburg! That is rare good news from the Yazoo. I hope Ross has done something there. My health is excellent, 155 pounds of ham and crackers, for that is all I've eaten in four months. One hundred and sixty secesh soldiers lie as closely as they can be packed in this cemetery. Little boards with initials cut on them are all the marks their graves have. Our boys all cut on a large board with full name of regiment, and residence, at the head of their graves. I send you some blossoms from the graveyard.

SOURCE: Charles Wright Wills, Army Life of an Illinois Soldier, p. 161-4

Diary of 2nd Lieutenant John S. Morgan: Friday, April 14, 1865

Spend a pleasant day, have a skiff ride, boys fishing a great deal, plenty of eels in the creek, the train gone in with 3 wounded of the 91st Ill. our whole loss of yesterday, the Rebs lost by accounts of negros who have come in since 10 killed besides the wounded, boys go out to the houses close by & get milk butter & eggs. forage good fat beef & plenty of meal at an old Reb commissary. at 5. P. M. cos B. & G. are relieved & ordered to report to the Regt. 4 miles distant, get our supper over & start at 5.30 making mile heats, it would have been all right had we not tried to take a Short cut across to save a few steps. got lost & marched about in the brush & sloughs for a mile before we found the regt. by which time it was 9 o clock, found Capt with a tent up. Many flying rumors in camp. — that Grant captured 37000 of Lees army then Lee surrendered 40,000 more, — That Thomas has captured Forest & his men. & Thomas men skalped Forest (?) — that Steele captured a train & 5 locomotives which attempted to run out last night. Capt Gibson (Ex Major 33 Iowa) in C. S. Post of Mobile,

SOURCE: “Diary of John S. Morgan, Company G, 33rd Iowa Infantry,” Annals of Iowa, 3rd Series, Vol. 13, No. 8, April 1923, p. 591

Diary of Corporal Alexander G. Downing: Saturday, September 24, 1864

This morning found us lying at Acworth, Georgia, having arrived at about 11 o'clock in the night. There is an engine off the track about a mile east of town, and they are at work repairing the track and trying to get the engine back on. Eleven trains are waiting here, six going North and five South. We left Acworth at 2 p. m. and arrived at Big Shanty, where we again had to lie until night, waiting for the railroad to be repaired. The rebels tore up the tracks to the west of Kenesaw mountain, this afternoon. They had a small battery with them and threw some shells at the trains, but with the exception of hitting three or four cars, did no damage.

Source: Alexander G. Downing, Edited by Olynthus B., Clark, Downing’s Civil War Diary, p. 217