Diary of Private Daniel L. Ambrose: Between July 4 & August 31, 1861

After remaining in Camp at Mound City, Illinois, a few days, we proceeded down the Ohio as far as Cairo, where again the regiment goes into Camp Defiance. And whilst here, from morning until night, the officers’ voices are heard in command on the drill ground, bringing the regiment up to a high standard, preparing them that they may play well their part in the coming drama.

Remaining in Camp Defiance two weeks, we take passage on board the steamer “New Uncle Sam,” and are soon passing up the Mississippi river, accompanied by other steamers, loaded with troops from Bird's Point and Cairo. It is rumored that we will land at some point and enter Missouri. The Seventh are now standing on the deck of the steamer as she moves proudly up the river, and as we look over into Missouri, where wicked men have assailed the flag and freedom, our hearts beat high, and we long to be there, that we may unfurl our flag and give it freedom to wave on that side the river as well as on this.

After a pleasant trip the regiment lands at Sulphur Springs, Missouri, and in a measure the wishes of the men are gratified, for they are now on rebel soil. From this point we proceed by rail to Ironton, and upon our arrival there, we are met by General Prentiss, who makes the regiment a speech, telling them that they have been ordered there to help him drive Jeff. Thompson from Missouri. We go into camp in the vicinity of Ironton. The scenery around here is grand. Pilot Knob looms up peerlessly, close to where we are camped. The Seventh boys are often seen on its summits (standing as it were amid the clouds) looking down in the valley. While here the regiment is uniformed—and the Seventh's boys will remember those striped uniforms which made them look like convicts late from Jefferson City.

SOURCES: Daniel Leib Ambrose, History of the Seventh Regiment Illinois Volunteer Infantry, p. 12-4

Private Daniel L. Ambrose: July 25, 1861

[A]fter returning to Mound City, the regiment is mustered out of the three months' service the twenty-fifth of July, and on the same day is mustered into the three years' service by Captain Pitcher, U. S. A.

The story of Bull Run's battle field is now borne to our ears. Its wail has gone to the hearts of a throbbing people. The hearts of the men beat high to carry the flag into the Southland. This part of the Seventh's history I have seen fit to make brief; being anxious to lead the reader on as fast as possible to the days when the deep intonations of battle were heard. Days when the dogs of war barked loudly in tones of thunder around where the old Seventh's flag ofttimes stood encircled by a barricade of steel.

SOURCES: Daniel Leib Ambrose, History of the Seventh Regiment Illinois Volunteer Infantry, p. 10

Private Daniel L. Ambrose: July 17, 1861

From Cairo, on the seventeenth of [July], the regiment is marched up the Ohio river as far as Mound City, where it is quartered in a large brick building, on the bank of the river, which the Seventh will remember as Camp Joslyn, named in honor of Captain Joslyn of Company A. These were quiet days with the Seventh. In their ardor they felt in themselves the strength of giants.

SOURCES: Daniel Leib Ambrose, History of the Seventh Regiment Illinois Volunteer Infantry, p. 8

Diary of William Howard Russell: June 23, 1861

The latest information which I received today is of a nature to hasten my departure for Washington; it can no longer be doubted that a battle between the two armies assembled in the neighborhood of the capital is imminent. The vague hope which from time to time I have entertained of being able to visit Richmond before I finally take up my quarters with the only army from which I can communicate regularly with Europe has now vanished.

At four o'clock in the evening I started by the train on the famous Central Illinois line from Cairo to Chicago.

The carriages were tolerably well filled with soldiers, and in addition to them there were a few unfortunate women, undergoing deportation to some less moral neighborhood. Neither the look, language, nor manners of my fellow-passengers inspired me with an exalted notion of the intelligence, comfort, and respectability of the people which are so much vaunted by Mr. Seward and American journals, and which, though truly attributed, no doubt, to the people of the New England States, cannot be affirmed with equal justice to belong to all the other components of the Union.

As the Southerners say, their negroes are the happiest people on the earth, so the Northerners boast, “We are the most enlightened nation in the world.” The soldiers in the train were intelligent enough to think they ought not to be kept without pay, and free enough to say so. The soldiers abused Cairo roundly, and indeed it is wonderful if the people can live on any food but quinine. However, speculators, looking to its natural advantages as the point where the two great rivers join, bespeak for Cairo a magnificent and prosperous future. The present is not promising.

Leaving the shanties, which face the levees, and some poor wooden houses with a short vista of cross streets partially flooded at right angles to them, the rail suddenly plunges into an unmistakable swamp, where a forest of dead trees wave their ghastly, leafless arms over their buried trunks, like plumes over a hearse — a cheerless, miserable place, sacred to the ague and fever. This occurs close to the cleared space on which the city is to stand, — when it is finished — and the rail, which runs on the top of the embankment or levee, here takes to the trestle, and is borne over the water on the usual timber frame-work.

“Mound City,” which is the first station, is composed of a mere heap of earth, like a ruined brickkiln, which rises to some height and is covered with fine white oaks, beneath which are a few log huts and hovels, giving the place its proud name. Tents were pitched on the mound side, from which wild-looking banditti sort of men, with arms, emerged as the train stopped. “I’ve been pretty well over Europe,” said a meditative voice beside me, “and I've seen the despotic armies of the old world, but I don't think they equal that set of boys.” The question was not worth arguing — the boys were in fact very “weedy,” “splinter-shinned chaps,” as another critic insisted.

There were some settlers in the woods around Mound City, and a jolly-looking, corpulent man, who introduced himself as one of the officers of the land department of the Central Illinois railroad, described them as awful warnings to the emigrants not to stick in the south part of Illinois. It was suggestive to find that a very genuine John Bull, “located,” as they say in the States for many years, had as much aversion to the principles of the abolitionists as if he had been born a Southern planter. Another countryman of this and mine, steward on board the steamer to Cairo, eagerly asked me what I thought of the quarrel, and which side I would back. I declined to say more than I thought the North possessed very great superiority of means if the conflict were to be fought on the same terms. Whereupon my Saxon friend exclaimed, “all the Northern States and all the power of the world can't beat the South; and why? — because the South has got cotton, and cotton is king.”

The Central Illinois officer did not suggest the propriety of purchasing lots, but he did intimate I would be doing service if I informed the world at large, they could get excellent land, at sums varying from ten to twenty-five dollars an acre. In America a man's income is represented by capitalizing all that he is worth, and whereas in England we say a man has so much a year, the Americans, in representing his value, observe that he is worth so many dollars, by which they mean that all he has in the world would realize the amount.

It sounds very well to an Irish tenant farmer, an English cottier, or a cultivator in the Lothians, to hear that he can get land at the rate of from £2 to £5 per acre, to be his forever, liable only to state taxes; but when he comes to see a parallelogram marked upon the map as “good soil, of unfathomable richness,” and finds in effect that he must cut down trees, eradicate stumps, drain off water, build a house, struggle for high-priced labor, and contend with imperfect roads, the want of many things to which he has been accustomed in the old country, the land may not appear to him such a bargain. In the wooded districts he has, indeed a sufficiency of fuel as long as trees and stumps last, but they are, of course, great impediments to tillage. If he goes to the prairie he finds that fuel is scarce and water by no means wholesome.

When we left this swamp and forest, and came out after a run of many miles on the clear lands which abut upon the prairie, large fields of corn lay around us, which bore a peculiarly blighted and harassed look. These fields were suffering from the ravages of an insect called the “army worm,” almost as destructive to corn and crops as the locust-like hordes of North and South, which are vying with each other in laying waste the fields of Virginia. Night was falling as the train rattled out into the wild, flat sea of waving grass, dotted by patch-like Indian corn enclosures; but halts at such places as Jonesburgh and Cobden, enabled us to see that these settlements in Illinois were neither very flourishing nor very civilized.

There is a level modicum of comfort, which may be consistent with the greatest good of the greatest number, but which makes the standard of the highest in point of well-being very low indeed. I own, that to me, it would be more agreeable to see a flourishing community placed on a high level in all that relates to the comfort and social status of all its members than to recognize the old types of European civilization, which place the castle on the hill, surround its outer walls with the mansion of doctor and lawyer, and drive the people into obscure hovels outside. But then one must confess that there are in the castle some elevating tendencies which cannot be found in the uniform level of citizen equality. There are traditions of nobility and noble deeds in the family; there are paintings on the walls; the library is stored with valuable knowledge, and from its precincts are derived the lessons not yet unlearned in Europe, that though man may be equal, the condition of men must vary as the accidents of life or the effects of individual character, called fortune, may determine.

The towns of Jonesburgh and Cobden have their little teapot-looking churches and meeting-houses, their lager-bier saloons, their restaurants, their small libraries, institutes, and reading rooms, and no doubt they have also their political cliques, social distinctions and favoritisms; but it requires, nevertheless, little sagacity to perceive that the highest of the bourgeois who leads the mass at meeting and prayer, has but little to distinguish him from the very lowest member of the same body politic. Cobden, for example, has no less than four drinking saloons, all on the line of rail, and no doubt the highest citizen in the place frequents some one or other of them, and meets there the worst rowdy in the place. Even though they do carry a vote for each adult man, “locations” here would not appear very enviable in the eyes of the most miserable Dorsetshire small farmer ever ferreted out by “S. G. O.”

A considerable number of towns, formed by accretions of small stores and drinking places, called magazines, round the original shed wherein live the station master and his assistants, mark the course of the railway. Some are important enough to possess a bank, which is generally represented by a wooden hut, with a large board nailed in front, bearing the names of the president and cashier, and announcing the success and liberality of the management. The stores are also decorated with large signs, recommending the names of the owners to the attention of the public, and over all of them is to be seen the significant announcement, “Cash for produce.”

At Carbondale there was no coal at all to be found, but several miles farther to the north, at a place called Dugoine, a field of bituminous deposit crops out, which is sold at the pit's mouth for one dollar twenty-five cents, or about 5s. 2d. a ton. Darkness and night fell as I was noting such meagre particulars of the new district as could be learned out of the window of a railway carriage; and finally with a delicious sensation of cool night air creeping in through the windows, the first I had experienced for many a long day, we made ourselves up for repose, and were borne steadily, if not rapidly, through the great prairie, having halted for tea at the comfortable refreshment rooms of Centralia.

There were no physical signs to mark the transition from the land of the Secessionist to Union-loving soil. Until the troops were quartered there, Cairo was for Secession, and Southern Illinois is supposed to be deeply tainted with disaffection to Mr. Lincoln. Placards on which were printed the words, “Vote for Lincoln and Hamlin, for Union and Freedom,” and the old battle-cry of the last election, still cling to the wooden walls of the groceries, often accompanied by bitter words or offensive additions.

One of my friends argues that as slavery is at the base of Secession, it follows that States or portions of States will be disposed to join the Confederates or the Federalists, just as the climate may be favorable or adverse to the growth of slave produce. Thus in the mountainous parts of the Border States of Kentucky and Tennessee, in the north-western part of Virginia, vulgarly called the pan-handle, and in the pine woods of North Carolina, where white men can work at the rosin and naval store manufactories, there is a decided feeling in favor of the Union; in fact, it becomes a matter of isothermal lines. It would be very wrong to judge of the condition of a people from the windows of a railway carriage, but the external aspect of the settlements along the line, far superior to that of slave hamlets, does not equal my expectations. We all know the aspect of a wood in a gentleman's park; which is submitting to the axe, and has been partially cleared, how raw and bleak the stumps look, and how dreary is the naked land not yet turned into arable. Take such a patch, and fancy four or five houses made of pine planks, sometimes not painted, lighted by windows in which there is, or has been, glass, each guarded by a paling around a piece of vegetable garden, a pig house, and poultry box; let one be a grocery, which means a whiskey shop, another the post-office, and a third the store where “cash is given for produce.” Multiply these groups, if you desire a larger settlement, and place a wooden church with a Brobdignag spire and Lilliputian body out in a waste, to be approached only by a causeway of planks; before each grocery let there be a gathering of tall men in sombre clothing, of whom the majority have small newspapers, and all of whom are chewing tobacco; near the stores let there be some light-wheeled carts and ragged horses, around which are knots of unmistakably German women; then see the deep tracks which lead off to similar settlements in the forest or prairie, and you have a notion, if your imagination is strong enough, of one of these civilizing centres which the Americans assert to be the homes of the most cultivated and intelligent communities in the world.

SOURCE: William Howard Russell, My Diary North and South, Vol. 1, p. 346-51

3rd Sergeant Charles Wright Wills: October 27, 1861

Bird's Point, October 27, 1861.

I haven't written for a full week because I really had nothing to write and in fact I have not now. Although soldiering is a hugely lazy life, yet these short days we seem to have but little spare time. We are up nearly an hour before sun up, have breakfast about sunrise, drill (company) from about 8 to 10. Cards until dinner time, 12; lounge or read until 2; battalion drill untill 4:30 or 5, supper, and then dress parade at 4:45; from candle lighting untill bedtime (taps), 10, we have cards mixed with singing or some awful noises from Sam Nutt and Fred Norcott. Those two boys can make more noise than three threshing machines. Our boys are all in excellent health and prime spirits. Fred and Sam and Sid are fatter than the Canton folk ever saw them. There are but four regiments at the Point now, so we have to work on the entrenchments every fourth day two hours or cut down trees the same length of time. We are clearing away the timber within 500 yards of the earthworks. It is mostly Cottonwood and very heavy. They stand so thick that if we notch a dozen or so pretty deep and then fell one it will knock three or four down. Lin Coldwell and I are going to get a set of chess to-morrow. That gunboat, “New Era,” that the papers blow so much about is of no account as a gunboat. She is laid up at Mound City for a battery. The men on her have told me that she wouldn't half stand before a land battery that amounted to anything. We are beginning to have some frost here, but I don't believe we'd suffer a bit lying in these tents all winter. The sickly season is over now and the health is improving very much. We had 18 on the sick list in our company three weeks ago and now we have but three, and they are only diarrhoea or the like. I tell you I feel as strong as two mules and am improving. I haven't been the least unwell yet. Our boys are perfectly sick for a fight so they can be even with the 17th. We are sure that the 17th doesn't deserve to be named the same day with us for drill or discipline, with all their bragging. They are an awful set of blowhards. Sid., Theo., Ben Rockhold and John Wallace are on picket out of our mess to-night. The picket was fired on last night where they are posted to-night.

SOURCE: Charles Wright Wills, Army Life of an Illinois Soldier, p. 38-9

Diary of Private Charles Wright Wills: July 1, 1861

Cairo.  Writing letters is getting to be harder work than drilling, and is more dreaded by the boys. Lots of people are visiting the camp now, many of them ladies, but I tell you that they use their fans more than their spy-glasses after a very few looks.

I was up to Mound City yesterday with nine others of our company on a United States boat that has three cannons on her. Mound City is a beautiful little place, and takes it name from a mound about 30 feet in diameter and 10 feet high, on which grow a dozen spindling locusts. I have been about 12 miles up each river from the point here. At that distance the river banks are, say 25 feet high, and slope down to the point, and run into a broad wide sandbar that ends Illinois.

Fishing is a principal amusement or time-killer now. I have fished about four days and caught nary a “minner.”

There is no outside influence used to induce a man to re-enlist. Officers tell every man to use his own judgment, and each fellow does his own thinking and — another long dash or words to that effect.

SOURCE: Charles Wright Wills, Army Life of an Illinois Soldier, p. 20

From Cairo

CAIRO, May 14.

We have received the following dispatches from our correspondent, written just as the mail tug was leaving the Mississippi flotilla, off Fort Pillow, May 13, 12 o’clock m.

A rebel tug has this moment been around the point on a reconnoissance.  Everything seems to indicate a renewed activity on both sides.  We are expecting an attack momentarily.

From Pittsburg we have a dispatch from our own reporter, who had been in front of the lines, and judged that our attack would not be made upon the enemy’s position for several days.  Our siege guns were not yet in position.  Capt. Madison’s battery reached Monterey only on the 9th inst.

The general impression in the army was that the enemy would make no stand at Corinth, but he believes this opinion wrong.

Gen. Halleck is advancing upon the place continuously, and carefully fortifying as he advances.  All his movements are predicated upon the supposition that the enemy is in large force at Corinth, and that he intends to make a stand there.  Grand Junction is being fortified by Beauregard with the evident intention of falling back there if beaten at Corinth.  The number of the enemy’s troops at Corinth is estimated at Gen. Halleck’s headquarters at from 120,000 to 170,000.

The gunboat Mound City was considerably damaged in her bows in the late naval engagement at Fort Pillow, and is now at Mound City awaiting an opportunity of going into dry dock for repairs.

Gen. Strong yesterday visited the hospital at Mound City.  There are only fifty patients in the hospital at present.  Additional apartments are being prepared and improvements effected to accommodate the wounded at the expected battle of Corinth.

– Published in The Davenport Daily Gazette, Davenport, Iowa, Friday Morning, May 16, 1862, p. 2

From Halleck’s Army

CAIRO, May 8.

No engagement had occurred at Corinth up to yesterday noon.  The army was still gradually advancing, and our forces were at an average distance of three miles from the enemy’s advance.  The enemy were acting strictly on the defensive, and for three days had sent out no reconnoitering parties.  The advanced lines of the rebel army have thus far slowly retired from the advancing movements of the different divisions.  Indications point strongly to the belief that Corinth has really been evacuated.

The roads are in bad condition owning to a late fall of rain.

It was reported that three brigades from Buell’s army had seized that part of the Memphis and Charleston Railroad which lies midway between Corinth and Grand Junction, thus cutting off communication between the two points.  It is also reported that a detachment of Pope’s army has seized upon the railroad south of Corinth.  It is highly probably that these two achievements have been performed.

Every steamer that arrives brings reports of the evacuation of Corinth.

The steamer Desoto reached here to-day from Fort Pillow, but brought no later news than that already telegraphed.

A rebel spy had been captured while endeavoring to cross the Mississippi at night in a skiff.  He had copies of the Chicago Times of the 4th inst., St. Louis Republican of the 5th inst., and N. Y. Times of the 1st.  He was arrested and placed in close confinement.

The steamer Sam Gaty passed her to-day en route for Pittsburg, with a number of physicians, nurses, and a large quantity of hospital supplies on board.  She has on board nearly four hundred sick soldiers, who are to be taken to St. Louis.

The railroad track between here and Mound City is being repaired so that the trains will run regularly.

– Published in The Davenport Daily Gazette, Davenport, Iowa, Saturday Morning, May 10, 1862, p. 1

From The Second Iowa Cavalry

HAMBURG, Harding Co., Tenn., April 25.

FRIEND SANDERS:  When I left Davenport I promised to write you occasionally.  I have kept my word, though I have only written you once before this, for I understand occasionally to mean when there is occasion for it, or in other words when there is something to write, worth your trouble to print and the public to read.  Such occasions in the army are rare, for generally that which may be written is hardly worth the effort, and everything really valuable or important is prohibited.  Of our travels and exploits as a regiment you have a very faithful and lively reporter in the person of “Diff,” who keeps you fully posted, but I have an item or two which deserves to be published, to the credit of our regiment and satisfaction of their friends.

Many regiments have taken special pains to report the amount of money sent home by the soldiers, and heartily approving the practice, I desire to speak for the 2d Iowa Cavalry.  Last week I took from New Madrid to Cairo, to express to the families of soldiers, fourteen thousand and six hundred dollars, nearly all from our regiment; and full ninety-five per cent. of the amount went to Iowa, and probably not less than six or seven more was sent by private hands and by mail; besides many of our officers being in Cairo at about the same time expressed their own packages.  When it is known that the regiment had nearly four months’ pay due and only received for two months, this amount I think will compare favorably with that sent from any other regiment under same circumstances.

I have another little incident which I consider it a pleasure and a duty to relate, as a public acknowledgment of personal obligation, as follows:  Some weeks ago while on a trip from New Madrid to Cairo after the mail for Gen. Pope’s division, I was compelled to leave my horse at Sikeston, when some rascal, being a better judge of horseflesh than of morals, stole my horse, to recover which it cost me several days of anxiety and tedious travel, besides considerable money.  Yesterday Lt. Col. Hatch and Capt. Sanford, Co. H, presented me with seventy dollars in behalf of the officers of their regiment, to reimburse me for the expense of the above, and for my late trip to Cairo as express messenger.  The value, to me, of this compliment is not at all expressed in figures.  The good feeling and sympathy that prompted it, and of which the act is evidence, is worth more to me than treasury notes.  I only hope I may always deserve their confidence and they always enjoy their prosperity their liberality deserves.

As predicted in my last the general health of our men is much improved.  The more frequent our changes and the nearer the prospect of battle, the better the health.  I have known men quite sick in hospital to rally under marching orders and be able to travel in twenty-four hours, or at least they would travel and do when permitted, so reluctant are they to be left behind.

Having passed over my ground proper, leaving country, scenery, exploits and trophies for “Diff,”

I remain yours, &c.,

C. G. TRUSDELL,

Chaplain 2d Iowa Cavalry.

__________

FRIEND SANDERS:  On Tuesday last the 22d, after a week of entire seclusion, the sun rose in all his former brightness and glory, giving a more cheering prospect to things generally.

Lieut. Col. Hatch, in command of the 2nd cavalry, with the staff and two companies, had been transferred from an over-crowded boat, to the Platte Valley.  After taking aboard forage, she steamed up to Mound City, and took on coal for the trip.  Col. Hatch and Major Love visited the two hospitals at Cairo and reported everything kept in A No. 1, style – eight hundred sick and wounded in one and five hundred in the other.  Mound City is beautifully submerged, the water being up to the windows of the houses.  The Hospitals being large high building suffer none, except the basement, which is not occupied.

In the evening we left Mound City for this place, passing Paducah in the night.  Next morning we found ourselves on a swollen but most beautiful river.  The Tennessee is a narrow stream, the banks rising at this high stage of water from ten to one hundred feet above the water level, with generally level bottoms extending from a quarter to two miles from the river.  In some places the bluffs approach to the water’s edge.  About 9 o’clock we landed at Fort Henry.  It is not more than four feet above the water at present, and gunboats had a fine range for their guns at that Fort.  The rebels had commenced works on top of a high ridge, half a mile from the river, a few miles above, in a much stronger position, but the sudden appearance of our gunboats caused them to skedaddle.

Here is a navigable river flowing for near three hundred miles through a fine, rich soil, and a climate second to none, possessed of unusual natural advantages, in the heart of a country long settled, yet we pass along near two hundred miles and witness not a single town, not even in name, and on average I do not think one plantation in five miles.  What a commentary on “the institution.”  Were it in free Iowa, what a different scene would it present, thousands of happy homes, some cities and scores of thriving villages.

On Thursday morning, the 23d, we arrived at Pittsburg Landing.  We soon got orders to move up five miles to this place, and disembarked.  Gen. Pope’s division is on the left flank at this place, with the cavalry on the extreme left.  The right is thrown out for the river below the landing, while the centre is held by Gen. Buell’s division.  Our lines must, I think, present a front of eight or ten miles.

At the place where our troops poured back to the river on the 6th, there is a fine rolling bluff, perhaps a hundred feet high, over which it is said our troops swarmed by thousands.  Less than half a mile above is a slough running up back of the bluff.  Our gunboats took position at the mouth of the slough and saved our army.

The battle-field presents a view of the rough side of war, many of the rebels being buried on top of the ground, which has washed off, leaving here an arm, there a leg, and again a skull exposed to view, while the stench arising from the shallow graves is far from pleasant.

The day we arrived, the cavalry got orders to move five miles out on the Corinth road.  The 1st battalion is now camped there.  A rain set in during the night and continuing, the order was suspended in the morning.  To-day is clear again, and a few days will make the roads passable.  The engineers are at work on the road.

I do not know the number of our forces here, and wouldn’t tell if I did; but we have enough to whip Beauregard’s rebel hoards, and crown with victory the decisive battle of the Mississippi valley.  Within ten days you may chronicle the glorious result.

For 2nd cavalry, address to Gen. Pope’s division, Tennessee river.  Hoping to give you details of the battle after the victory, I am yours,

DIFF.

– Published in The Davenport Daily Gazette, Davenport, Iowa, Friday Morning, May 2, 1862, p. 2

Cairo News

CAIRO, April 2. – Accounts from Island No. 10, represent matters there unchanged.  The bombardment continues at slow intervals. – Shells have been thrown into the new fortifications on the Kentucky side of the river, and a few shots have been received in return, with no great damage on either side.

The rebels are continually busy at building fortifications.  They are improving every moment of time, and when the attack is made, it will be found that the delay has greatly enhanced the difficulty of capture.

Firing is continually heard in the direction of New Madrid, and it is supposed that the enemy are making desperate efforts to prevent General Pope from crossing the river.  They have erected batteries on the point opposite New Madrid, which commands a stretch of about five miles of the river, and places his transports in danger of annihilation.  He must silence the batteries before he can cross to the relief of the fleet.

The rebels have also built batteries on the river below New Madrid, and have their gunboats in readiness for action.  There are one or two of these boats guarding the point where our troops are expected to cross.

Advices direct from New Madrid report that Gen. Pope is in active preparation, and will soon be in a condition to enter the field, with an overwhelming force.  We are not permitted to give the details of his plans, but they will be such as will accomplish any desired result, which may be within the range of possibilities.

There is nothing from the Tennessee river of direct importance.

We here that Gen. Grant is nearly prepared for the grand battle that is expected.  The members of his staff who are here, have been ordered to report at Headquarters immediately.

Gen. Buell is on the line of the Nashville and Decatur Railroad, making very slow progress.

The terrific storm that visited this locality last night, extended over a wide tract of country, and did an immense amount of damage, 10 or 12 lives were lost here by the breaking of the levee and sinking of boats.

At Paducah and Mound City, large numbers of houses were unroofed, and several lives lost.

We have heard nothing of its effect on the bombarding fleet.

– Published in The Burlington Weekly Hawk-Eye, Burlington, Iowa, Saturday, April 5, 1862, p. 3

From Island No. 10

Special to the Chicago Times.

CAIRO, April 2.

Accounts from Island No. 10 represent matters there unchanged.  The bombardment continued at intervals.  Shells have been thrown into the new fortifications in the bed of the river.  A few shots have been received in return, with no great damaged on either side.

The rebels are continually building new fortifications.  They are improving every moment of time, and when the attack is made it will be found that the delay has greatly enhanced the difficulty of capture.

Firing is continually heard in the direction of New Madrid, and it is supposed that the enemy are making desperate efforts to prevent Gen. Pope from crossing the river.  They have erected batteries on the point opposite New Madrid, which command a stretch of about five miles of the river, and place his transports in danger of annihilation.  He must silence these batteries before he can cross to the relief of the fleet.

The rebels have also built batteries on the river below New Madrid, and have their gunboats in readiness for action. – There are one or two of these boats guarding the point where our troops are expected to cross.

Advices direct from New Madrid report that Gen. Pope is in active preparation and will soon be in a condition to enter the field, with an overwhelming power.  We are not permitted to give details of his plans, but they will be such as will accomplish the desired result, if it is within the range of possibility.

There is nothing from the Tennessee river of direct importance.

We hear that Gen. Grant is nearly prepared for the grand battle that is expected.  The members of his staff who are here have been ordered to report at head-quarters immediately.

Gen. Buell is on the line of the Nashville and Decatur Railroad, making very slow progress.

The terrific storm that visited this locality last night extended over a wide track of country, and did an immense amount of damage.  Ten or twelve lives were lost by the breaking loose and sinking of boats. – At Paducah and Mound City a large number of houses were unroofed, and several lives lost.  We have heard nothing of its effects on the bombarding fleet.

Special to Evening Journal.

CAIRO, April 2.

The Pike arrived tonight from the fleet.  She reports the gunboat and mortars uninjured.  Two Transports were somewhat damaged.

CAIRO, April 3.

The steamer Philadelphia which was blown away in the gale, yesterday, and supposed to be lost, has been found, on the shore just above Columbus.  She is badly damaged and lost three of her crew.

Eight persons were blown overboard from the steamer Americus and drowned.

A flat boat, occupied by a poor family as resident, was blown away and sunk, the family escaping upon a coal barge, as it floated past.

The Cairo and Columbus wharf-boat was towed back last night, not much damaged.

Things are working at Island No. 10. – Night before last Col. Roberts of the Ills. 42d, with 40 picked men of his command in company with a boat’s crew from each of the gunboats, under command of 1^st master Johnson, of the St. Louis, started at 11 o’clock to take soundings.

At 12 o’clock they brought up at the redan fort, which is the upper one of the rebel works, where they landed.  The rebel sentinels fired their pieces and ran in, leaving the battery in our possession.

The union troops found six guns here which they spiked and left.  One of the guns was a massive 64-pounder; the rest were 24 and 32 pounders.

Not a man was killed or wounded on our side, nor was any one hurt on the other so far as heard from.

– Published in The Davenport Daily Gazette, Davenport, Iowa, Friday Morning, April 4, 1862, p. 1