Vicksburg is ours;
Johnson defeated and his forces scattered; our work in Mississippi is
performed, and we have taken up the line of march for some other distant field.
We left Jackson at 3
a. m. today for Haines Bluff, where we take transports for some point north or
east. I think I will be glad to put in the balance of my work a little farther
north, although I would not hesitate to go anywhere, so I might contribute my
mite toward putting down this rebellion. But, other things being equal, I would
choose to be where we could get pure water, and, what I prize more than all
else, hear from my loved family with some degree of regularity. It has been a
sore trial, and hard to bear, to be compelled to wait for days and weeks for
tidings from a sick and suffering wife.
We marched twelve
miles this forenoon, and have halted for dinner. Fifteen miles must be made
this afternoon to obtain water. It is a tough march, but necessity compels. It
would seem that, in an emergency like this, when our lives depend upon our
"staying power," some unseen hand sustains us. As for myself, I have
never borne hard marches so well as in Mississippi.
I see by the papers
there is much talk of the Rebels carrying the war into the North. Well, let
them go. "Whom the gods would destroy they first make mad." I am not
sure but it is the only thing that can unite the North; certainly it will
hasten the downfall of the Confederacy.
SOURCE: David Lane,
A Soldier's Diary: The Story of a Volunteer, 1862-1865, p. 69-70
