Diary of Private Seth J. Wells, March 5, 1863

We received the news of the Conscription Act. It passed both Houses and became a law. It receives the general approval of the soldiers. Peats drilled us from 10 to 11 o'clock this forenoon, and from 2 until 3 o'clock in the afternoon. We had dress parade at 4 o'clock. There was an order read from Major Peats awarding a medal, worth not less than fifty dollars, to the best drilled in the manual, and the most prompt in the discharge of duty. He gives until the 1st of May. A dredge passed here today. Some of our boys found four hundred bales of cotton, a large pile of corn, and about two tons of meat hidden in canebrake and swamps.

SOURCE: Seth James Wells, The Siege of Vicksburg: From the Diary of Seth J. Wells, Including Weeks of Preparation and of Occupation After the Surrender, pp. 42-3

Diary of 2nd Lieutenant Lemuel A. Abbott: Thursday, April 21, 1864

A truly beautiful day, warm and pleasant with no wind at all; regiment moved to a new camp this morning; most of the line officers remain here yet. The three left Companies, B, G and K contested for the medal Major C. G. Chandler proposed giving last winter, and B, my old Company and the one I have been with all winter, won it. Of course it would! It always honors itself and me; got a letter from home to-night.

SOURCE: Lemuel Abijah Abbott, Personal Recollections and Civil War Diary, 1864, p. 38