June 17, 1864.
After erecting some good works at Roswell (the best we have
yet built), capable of holding at least 25,000 men, we were provided with three
days’ rations and cartridges “ad libitum,” for another of what an Augusta paper
calls “Sherman leap-frog-like advance.” Our corps is the extreme left of the
army. We moved out this morning, our brigade in advance of our division, and
Osterhaus and Smith's Divisions following on the Decatur road. Did I tell you
in my last among the “locals,” that these Roswell factories have been turning
out 35,000 yards per day of jeans, etc., for the Confederate Army, that there
is the greatest abundance of blackberries and whortleberries here, that one of
the 48th Illinois was drowned in the Chattahoochie while bathing, and that of several
hundred factory girls I have seen, hardly one who is passably handsome? Some
fine fat ones, and a few neat feet, but they are not “clipper built,” and lack “get
up” and “figure heads.”
We moved six miles without meeting a Rebel, and then only a
squadron of cavalry that lacked a devilish sight of being “chivalry,” for they
more than ran without just cause. We only went two miles farther and then
bivouacked. Our brigade was thrown half a mile in front and across the road. We
put up a rail barricade across the road and a temporary rail-work along our
front, and then abandoned ourselves to the longings of our breadbaskets, and
desisted not until every man was in himself a miniature blackberry patch. The
boys brought me pint after pint of great black fellows they had picked in the
shade of dense woods or on a steep bank, and I assure you they disappeared
without an exception. This road, the last 10 days, has been filled with refugee
citizens running from the Yankees. An old gentleman in whose yard the reserve
pickets have stacked their arms, told me that all the men of his acquaintance
over 45 years old are, and always have been, Unionists, and are to-day ready
and willing to give up slavery for our cause. I have been a deluded believer in
the hoax of fine “Georgia plantations,” but I assure you I am now thoroughly
convalescent. I haven't seen five farm houses equal to Mrs. James ———, and only
one that showed evidences of taste. That was where I saw the Rebel General
Iverson dead among the flowers. The country is all hilly, and the soil, where
there is any, is only fit for turnips. The timber is all scrub oak and pine,
and some more viney bushes peculiar to the climate.
I notice some of the white moss hanging from the trees, like
that there was so much of at Black river. The 16th Corps is on our right moving
on a parallel road, and the 23d joins them. I don't know whether our other
corps have crossed yet or not.
SOURCE: Charles Wright Wills, Army Life of an
Illinois Soldier, p. 280-1
