We are
having cold weather; freezing quite hard at night, and making our lodgings in
these little rag houses anything but comfortable. I have been with a detail of men
down to the wharf unloading and storing army supplies. Annapolis is a depot of supplies,
and immense quantities are landed here and sent by rail to Washington. A person
never having given the subject of army preparation and supplies much thought,
would be astonished at the immense quantities he would see here, and would
begin to calculate how long it would be before Uncle Sam would be bankrupt.
Large warehouses are filled and breaking down under the weight of flour, beef,
pork, bread, sugar, coffee, clothing, ammunition, etc., while the wharves and
adjacent grounds are filled with hay, oats, lumber, coal, guns, mortars,
gun-carriages, pontoons and other appendages of an army. I presume the cost of feeding
and clothing an army of half a million of-men is not really so much as the same
number of men would cost at home, but the army being consumers, instead of producers,
the balance will eventually be found on the debit page of the ledger.
SOURCE: David L. Day, My Diary of Rambles with the
25th Mass. Volunteer Infantry, p. 15
