The teams went to the wharf down in Vicksburg for our tents.
The three boys from our company drawing furloughs were Sylvester Daniels,
Daniel E. Sweet and Major Christmas, and they left for home today on a
thirty-day furlough.1 I sent $1.00 with Sweet to buy postage stamps
for me and $2.00 to buy me a gold pen.2 I also sent $5.00 to father
by Daniels.
______________
1 In drawing lots for furlough, our diarist tells
me, the officers favored the married men. Mr. Downing himself did not care
about a furlough. — Ed.
2 I am using this pen in re-writing the
manuscript of my war diary fifty years later, and in my seventy-second year. — A.
G. D.
Source: Alexander G. Downing, Edited by Olynthus B.,
Clark, Downing’s Civil War Diary, p. 133
