A dull, foggy day; snow thawing rapidly. Savannah captured by Sherman on the 21st, Hardee making a hasty retreat across the river to South Carolina. Some important captures. Salute of one hundred guns fired. We expect to go to New Creek soon.
SOURCE: Charles Richard Williams, editor, Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes, Volume 2, p. 552
Five miles south of Cheraw, S. C., March 3, 1865.
General Wood says we have made 24 miles to-day. Our whole corps on one
road and hardly a check all day. This is Thompson's Creek, and the Rebels under
Hardee thoroughly fortified it. Logan's orders are to carry the works
to-morrow, but as usual the Rebels have left. The 17th A. C. took Cheraw this
p. m. without a fight, getting 27 pieces of field artillery, 3,000 stands of
small arms, besides a great deal of forage.
There were only two or three small farms on the road today. Poorest
country I have seen yet. An intelligent prisoner captured to-day says that
Kilpatrick has taken Charlotte, N. C., and that Lee is evacuating Richmond. Saw
the sun to-day; had almost forgotten there was such a luminary.
SOURCE: Charles Wright Wills, Army Life of an Illinois Soldier,
p. 356
