Diary of Colonel Rutherford B. Hayes: Thursday, May 12, 1864

A most disagreeable rainy day. Mud and roads horrible. Marched from Blacksburg to Salt Pond Mountain. My brigade had charge of the train. I acted as wagon-master; a long train to keep up. Rode all day in mud and rain back and forth. Met "Mudwall" Jackson and fifteen hundred [men]—a poor force that lit out rapidly from near Newport. Got to camp — no tents—[at] midnight. Mud; slept on wet ground without blankets. A horrible day, one of the worst of all my experience. Fifteen miles.

SOURCE: Charles Richard Williams, editor, Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes, Volume 2, p. 457-8

Diary of Margaret Junkin Preston: November 6, 1863

A lovely day, and in contrast to the feelings of the whole population. Last night I became uneasy at Mr. P.'s not coming home from the Institute till near ten o'clock, so I went out to meet him, taking Johnny along. After waiting a half hour on the street, he came at last, but with the alarming tidings that a courier had come in from the West, asking that the cadets and the Home Guard should be forthwith sent to the assistance of Col. Jackson¹ and Imboden; that 7000 of the enemy were between Jackson and the Warm Springs. So we were up before day this morning; I with a heavy heart. The cadets have gone, and the Home Guard from the various parts of the country. Mr. P. gone too; I feel very desolate. Bro. Eben² stopped to dinner; on his way his horse fell with him and hurt him considerably, but he will try to go on. The whole town is in commotion; no men left in it; even those over sixty-five have gone. I can't help hoping they may not have to stay any time or fight a battle.

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¹ This was Colonel William L. Jackson, a cousin of Stonewall Jackson, and a former lieutenant-governor of Virginia. His men nicknamed him " Mudwall" Jackson, a play upon the sobriquet of his more famous kinsman. — E. P. A.

2 The Rev. Eben D. Junkin, then pastor of New Providence church, about sixteen miles from Lexington.

SOURCE: Elizabeth Preston Allan, The Life and Letters of Margaret Junkin Preston, p. 168-9