Frank Hiscock to Major-General Henry W. Slocum, August 11, 1865

SYRACUSE, N. Y., August 11, 1865.

DEAR GENERAL:

We of the State of New York, of the chosen of the Lord, who are desirous of sustaining the administration of President Johnson, etc., are looking around for candidates for state offices this fall.

And now to the point. I have no doubt a nearly, if not entirely, unanimous nomination for the office of Secretary of State (the head of the ticket) can be secured you. I now think the nomination can be secured by acclamation; but certainly it can be secured so as to be, or appear to be, entirely unsought after by you,—if you desire it. I came from Saratoga yesterday, where together with Belden I talked with several of our friends. To-day, Watson, of Cayuga county, has been here. He is present at this writing and would be most happy to honor you. Therefore you see my judgment is not mere speculation. I believe, also, that you know enough of me to have a fair opinion of my discernment in political matters.

The question now is, What do you desire in the matter? Please write me fully, that your friends may act advisedly. I hardly know whether to advise you or not, but it must be obvious to you that for your own good, if you intend to come back to this State, the sooner you mix in State politics the better, and there can hardly be a better or more propitious way of entering than as a military "Hero," and before all the military heroes have retired to civil life, and have become your rivals for civic honors.

Most truly, your friend,

FRANK HISCOCK.

SOURCE: New York (State). Monuments Commission for the Battlefields of Gettysburg and Chattanooga, In Memoriam: Henry Warner Slocum, 1826-1894, p. 103

Jno. A. Green, Jr. to Major-General Henry W. Slocum, August 22, 1865

SYRACUSE, N. Y., August 22, 1865.

Strictly confidential.

MY DEAR SIR:

The political campaign is about opening, and from present appearances promises many curious combinations. I have just returned from a meeting of our Democratic State Committee at Albany, which called a State Convention for the nomination of State officers to meet on September sixth.

Now to the point. I am authorized by our leading politicians to offer you the place of Secretary of State on our ticket; or if the duties of this are too active for you, to ask you to accept that of Treasurer, where the duties are less active and require but little of your time. We would, however, prefer you to head the ticket.

Mr. Robinson, the present Comptroller, elected by the Republicans two years ago, desires a renomination from us, and he will in all probability get it. Martin Grover, elected by the Republicans to the Supreme Court bench, will be one of our nominees for the Court of Appeals. I mention these facts in order that you may get some idea of the drift affairs are taking.

There is not much doubt in the minds of good politicians but that we shall carry the State this fall. We intend to endorse President Johnson's administration with regard to his treatment of the Southern States, and while we shall endorse it quite generally, we shall avoid finding fault with it upon any question—believing that in a very short time the President's policy will conform to what is desired by the Democratic party. I am also warranted in saying that if you accept our nomination for Secretary of State, the pleasantest office on the ticket, and should be elected, you can have the nomination for Governor next year. The present would be but a stepping stone to the other. Understand me, this offer is not made by any particular interest or clique in the party, but would be given to you unanimously in the Convention. Dean Richmond knows of my writing this, and I shall expect with your permission to show him your reply. You will notice that I have written you very frankly; my acquaintance with you warrants me in doing so.

Regarding you more of a soldier than politician, you will pardon me when I express my belief that everything now indicates the speedy dissolution of the Republican party and the return of the Democracy to power-a result which just laws, equal taxation, and the best interests of the country imperatively demand. You will of course consider my letter as entirely confidential, and favor me with an immediate reply.

Yours very truly,

JNO. A. GREEN, JR.

To Maj. Genl. H. W. SLOCUM.

SOURCE: New York (State). Monuments Commission for the Battlefields of Gettysburg and Chattanooga, In Memoriam: Henry Warner Slocum, 1826-1894, p. 104

Major-General Henry W. Slocum to Major-General William T. Sherman, August 27, 1865

HEADQUARTERS DEPARTMENT OF MISSISSIPPI,        

VICKSBURG, MISS., August 27, 1865.

MY DEAR GENERAL:

Your favor of the twenty-second has just come to hand. I came here without my family and with the intention of remaining only until the surplus generals were mustered out. I did not like to go out with a crowd of worthless officers who should have been mustered out long ago; but I think ——— & Co. will outlive me after all, as I do not intend to spend the winter here. I shall pay you a visit on my way home.

Force has reported and been assigned to the command of the Vicksburg District, relieving Maltby. Force is a good officer and I am glad to get him. Charley Ewing has not yet come.

Woods has been very sick at Mobile but is better. I have met many of your old officers and soldiers since we parted, and all of them, without exception, are "loyal."

I enclose an order just published. I did not like to take this step; but Sharkey should have consulted me before issuing an order arming the rebs and placing them on duty with the darkies in every county of the State. I hope the U. S. Military will soon be removed from the State, but until this is done it would certainly be bad policy to arm the militia.

Yours, truly,

H. W. SLOCUM.

Maj. Genl. W. T. SHERMAN,
        St. Louis, Mo.

SOURCE: New York (State). Monuments Commission for the Battlefields of Gettysburg and Chattanooga, In Memoriam: Henry Warner Slocum, 1826-1894, p. 105

Major-General William T. Sherman to Major-General Henry W. Slocum, September 7, 1865

HEADQUARTERS MILITARY DIVISION OF THE MISSISSIPPI,        

ST. LOUIS, MO., September 7, 1865.

DEAR SLOCUM:

I have just received your letter of August twenty-seventh. Since I wrote you, Charley Ewing has gone down, and must now be with you. I have read all your orders and of course approve beforehand, as you, on the spot, are the competent judge. Sooner or later the people South must resume the management of their own affairs, even if they commit felo-de-se; for the North cannot long afford to keep armies there for local police. Still as long as you do have the force, and the State none, you must of necessity control. My own opinion is that self interest will soon induce the present people of Mississippi to invite and encourage a kind of emigration that will, like in Maryland and Missouri, change the whole public opinion. They certainly will not again tempt the resistance of the United States; nor will they ever reinstate the negro. The only question is when will the change occur.

I agree with you that if you see your way ahead in civil life, it is to your permanent interest to resign; it don't make much difference when. You have all the military fame you can expect in this epoch. All know your rank and appreciate you, and I would not submit to the scrambling for position next winter if I were in your place, unless you have resolved to stay in the army for life.

I shall be delighted to meet you as you come up. I am now boarding at the Lindell Hotel, but expect to go to housekeeping in a few days on Garrison Avenue, near Franklin Avenue, a fine property, presented to me, on the outskirts of the city, where I shall be delighted to receive you. My office is on Walnut Street, between five and six, near the Southern Hotel.

Always your friend,

W. T. SHERMAN.

SOURCE: New York (State). Monuments Commission for the Battlefields of Gettysburg and Chattanooga, In Memoriam: Henry Warner Slocum, 1826-1894, p. 105-3

Major-General William T. Sherman to Henry W. Slocum, December 26, 1865

SAINT LOUIS, Mo., December 26, 1865.

Gen. H. W. SLOCUM,
        Syracuse, New York:

DEAR SLOCUM:

I got home last Friday after a three weeks absence down in Arkansas, and found, among a budget of letters received, your valued favor of Nov. thirtieth. This is my first leisure hour since, and I hasten to assure you of my great personal attachment, and that I would do almost anything that would mark my favor to you.

I think I was more disappointed at your non-election than you could have been; for I thought that politics had not so strong a hold on New York as to defeat you for an office that should have been above the influence of mere party organization. But you are young, and can stand it; and I know that, sometime later, your State will recognize and reward, if you need it, military services such as you rendered your country.

At some future time I will come on to Syracuse and stop a day with you to assure you of my great partiality, and also to renew the short but most agreeable acquaintance formed in Washington with your wife, to whom I beg you will convey my best compliments.

As to delivering a lecture at Albany, I must decline. The truth is, on abstract subjects I know I would be as prosy as a cyclopedia, and not half as accurate; and to speak on matters of personal interest, past, present or future, I would be sure to give rise to controversies, useless or mischievous. Of the events with which we were connected, I am already committed, and must stand by the record. Were I to elaborate them it would detract from the interest of what now stands as a contemporaneous narrative. I really think we do best to let others now take up the thread of history, and treat of us as actors of the past.

Please write to Mr. Doty that I am very much complimented by his flattering invitation; that I appreciate the object he aims to accomplish, and would be glad to assist therein, but that outside considerations would make it unbecoming to appear in the nature of a lecturer. Too much importance has already been given to the few remarks I have made at times when I simply aimed to acknowledge a personal compliment, and to gratify a natural curiosity by people whose imaginations had been excited by the colored pictures drawn by the press.

I have not preserved out of the late war a single relic-not a flag, not a curious shot or shell; nothing but those simple memories which every New York soldier retains as well as I do. I do think that your regiment was so filled by young men of education and intelligence that the commissioners will find their records swelling to an extent that will more than gratify their fondest expectations.

We are now living in great comfort here. Your excellent photograph has its place in the albums of each of my children, and Mrs. Sherman regards you with special favor. Wishing you all honor and fame among your own people, I shall ever regard you as one of my cherished friends.

With respects,

W. T. SHERMAN,        

Major-General.

SOURCE: New York (State). Monuments Commission for the Battlefields of Gettysburg and Chattanooga, In Memoriam: Henry Warner Slocum, 1826-1894, p. 107-8

Diary of Lieutenant-Colonel John Beatty: July 16, 1861

The Fourteenth Indiana and one company of cavalry went to the summit this morning to fortify.

The Colonel has gone to Beverly. The boys repeat his Rich mountain speech with slight variations: "Men, there are ten thousand secessionists in Rich mountain, with forty rifled cannon, well fortified. There's bloody work ahead. You are going to a butcher-shop rather than a battle. Ten thousand men and forty rifled cannon! Hostler, you d----d scoundrel, why don't you wipe Jerome's nose?" Jerome is the Colonel's horse, known in camp as the White Bull.

Conway, who has been detailed to attend to the Colonel's horses, is almost as good a speech-maker as the Colonel. This, in brief, is Conway's address to the White Bull:

"Stand still there, now, or I'll make yer stand still. Hold up yer head there, now, or I'll make yer hold it up. Keep quiet; what the h-ll yer 'bout there, now? D--n you! do you want me to hit you a lick over the snoot, now-do you? Are you a inviten' me to pound you over the head with a sawlog? D--n yer ugly pictures, whoa!"

SOURCE: John Beatty, The Citizen-soldier: Or, Memoirs of a Volunteer, p. 29-30

Diary of Lieutenant-Colonel John Beatty: July 18, 1861

This afternoon, when riding down to Huttonville, I met three or four hundred sorry-looking soldiers. They were without arms. On inquiry, I found they were a part of the secession army, who, finding no way of escape, had come into our lines and surrendered. They were badly dressed, and a hard, dissolute-looking lot of men. To use the language of one of the soldiers, they were "a milk-sickly set of fellows," and would have died off probably without any help from us if they had been kept in the mountains a little longer. They were on their way to Staunton. General McClellan had very generously provided them with provisions for three days, and wagons to carry the sick and wounded; and so, footsore, weary, and chopfallen, they go over the hills.

An unpleasant rumor is in camp to-night, to the effect that General Patterson has been defeated at Williamsport. This, if true, will counterbalance our successes in Western Virginia, and make the game an even one.

The Southern soldiers mentioned above are encamped for the night a little over a mile from here. About dusk I walked over to their camp. They were gathered around their fires preparing supper.

Many of them say they were deceived, and entered the service because they were led to believe that the Northern army would confiscate their property, liberate their slaves, and play the devil generally. As they thought this was true, there was nothing left for them to do but to take up arms and defend themselves. While we were at Buckhannon, an old farmer-looking man visited us daily, bringing tobacco, cornbread, and cucumber pickles. This innocent old gen[tle]man proves to have been a spy, and obtained his reward in the loss of a leg at Rich mountain.

SOURCE: John Beatty, The Citizen-soldier: Or, Memoirs of a Volunteer, p. 30-1

Diary of Lieutenant-Colonel John Beatty: July 19, 1861

To-day, eleven men belonging to a company of cavalry which accompanied the Fourteenth Indiana to the Summit, were sent out on a scouting expedition. When about ten miles from camp, on the opposite side of the mountain, they halted, and while watering their horses were fired upon. One man was killed and three wounded. The other seven fled. Colonel Kimball sent out a detachment to bring in the wounded; but whether it succeeded or not I have not heard.

A musician belonging to the Fourth Ohio, when six miles out of Beverly, on his way to Phillippi, was fired upon and instantly killed. So goes what little there is of war in Western Virginia.

SOURCE: John Beatty, The Citizen-soldier: Or, Memoirs of a Volunteer, p. 31

Diary of Lieutenant-Colonel John Beatty: July 20, 1861

The most interesting of all days in the mountains is one on which the sky is filled with floating clouds, not hiding it entirely, but leaving here and there patches of blue. Then the shadows shift from place to place, as the moving clouds either let in the sunshine or exclude it. Standing at my tent-door at eleven o'clock in the morning, with a stiff breeze going, and the clouds on the wing, we see a peak, now in the sunshine, then in the shadow, and the lights and shadows chasing each other from point to point over the mountains, presenting altogether a panorama most beautiful to look upon, and such an one as God only can present.

I can almost believe now that men become, to some extent, like the country in which they live. In the plain country the inhabitants learn to traffic, come to regard money-getting as the great object in life, and have but a dim perception of those higher emotions from which spring the noblest acts. In a mountain country God has made many things sublime, and some things very beautiful. The rugged, the smooth, the sunshine, and the shadow meet one at every turn. Here are peaks getting the earliest sunlight of the morning, and the latest of the evening; ravines so deep the light of day can never penetrate them; bold, rugged, perpendicular rocks, which have breasted the storms for ages; gentle slopes, swelling away until their summits seem to dip in the blue sky; streams, cold and clear, leaping from crag to crag, and rushing down nobody knows whither. Like the country, may we not look to find the people unpolished, rugged and uneven, capable of the noblest heroism or the most infernal villainy—their lives full of lights and shadows, elevations and depressions?

The mountains, rising one above another, suggest, forcibly enough, the infinite power of the Creator, and when the peaks come in contact with the clouds it requires but little imagination to make one feel that God, as at Sinai, has set His foot upon the earth, and that earth and heaven are really very near each other.

SOURCE: John Beatty, The Citizen-soldier: Or, Memoirs of a Volunteer, p. 31-33

Diary of Lieutenant-Colonel John Beatty: July 21, 1861

This morning, at two o'clock, I was rattled up by a sentinel, who had come to camp in hot haste to inform me that he had seen and fired upon a body of twenty-five or more men, probably the advance guard of the enemy. He desired me to send two companies to strengthen the outpost. I preferred, however, to go myself to the scene of the trouble; and, after investigation, concluded that the guard had been alarmed by a couple of cows.

Another lot of secession prisoners, some sixty in number, passed by this afternoon. They were highly pleased with the manner in which they had been treated by their captors.

The sound of a musket is just heard on the picket post, three-quarters of a mile away, and the shot is being repeated by our line of sentinels. * * * The whole camp has been in an uproar. Many men, half asleep, rushed from their tents and fired off their guns in their company grounds. Others, supposing the enemy near, became excited and discharged theirs also. The tents were struck, Loomis' First Michigan Battery manned, and we awaited the attack, but none was made. It was a false alarm. Some sentinel probably halted a stump and fired, thus rousing a thousand men from their warm beds. This is the first night alarm we have had.

SOURCE: John Beatty, The Citizen-soldier: Or, Memoirs of a Volunteer, p. 33

Diary of Lieutenant-Colonel John Beatty: July 22, 1861

We hear that General Cox has been beaten on the Kanawha; that our forces have been repulsed at Manassas Gap, and that our troops have been unsuccessful in Missouri. I trust the greater part, if not all, of this is untrue.

We have been expecting orders to march, but they have not come. The men are very anxious to be moving, and when moving, strange to say, always very anxious to stop.

SOURCE: John Beatty, The Citizen-soldier: Or, Memoirs of a Volunteer, p. 34

Diary of Lieutenant-Colonel John Beatty: July 23, 1861

Officers and men are low-spirited to-night. The news of yesterday has been confirmed. Our army has been beaten at Manassas with terrible loss. General McClellan has left Beverly for Washington. General Rosecrans will assume command in Western Virginia. We are informed that twenty miles from us, in the direction of Staunton, some three thousand secessionists are in camp. We shall probably move against them.

SOURCE: John Beatty, The Citizen-soldier: Or, Memoirs of a Volunteer, p. 34

Diary of Lieutenant-Colonel John Beatty: July 24, 1861

The news from Manassas Junction is a little more cheering, and all feel better to-day.

We have now a force of about four thousand men in this vicinity, and two or three thousand at Beverly. We shall be in telegraphic communication with the North to-morrow.

The moon is at its full to-night, and one of the most beautiful sights I have witnessed was its rising above the mountain. First the sky lighted up, then a halo appeared, then the edge of the moon, not bigger than a star, then the half-moon, not semi-circular, but blazing up like a great gaslight, and, finally, the full, round moon had climbed to the top, and seemed to stop a moment to rest and look down on the valley.

SOURCE: John Beatty, The Citizen-soldier: Or, Memoirs of a Volunteer, p. 34-5

Diary of Lieutenant-Colonel John Beatty: July 27, 1861

The Colonel left for Ohio to-day, to be gone two weeks.

I came from the quarters of Brigadier-General Schleich a few minutes ago. He is a three-months' brigadier, and a rampant demagogue. Schleich said that slaves who accompanied their masters to the field, when captured, should be sent to Cuba and sold to pay the expenses of the war. I suggested that it would be better to take them to Canada and liberate them, and that so soon as the Government began to sell negroes to pay the expenses of the war I would throw up my commission and go home. Schleich was a State Senator when the war began. He is what might be called a tremendous little man, swears terribly, and imagines that he thereby shows his snap. Snap, in his opinion, is indispensable to a military man. If snap is the only thing a soldier needs, and profanity is snap, Schleich is a second Napoleon. This General Snap will go home, at the expiration of his three-months' term, unregretted by officers and men. Major Hugh Ewing will return with him. Last night the Major became thoroughly elevated, and he is not quite sober yet. He thinks, when in his cups, that our generals are too careful of their men. "What are a th-thousand men," said he, "when (hic) principle is at stake? Men's lives (hic) shouldn't be thought of at such a time (hic). Amount to nothing (hic). Our generals are too d----d slow" (hic). The Major is a man of excellent natural capacity, the son of Hon. Thomas Ewing, of Lancaster, and brother-in-law of W. T. Sherman, now a colonel or brigadier-general in the army. W. T. Sherman is the brother of John Sherman.

The news from Manassas is very bad. The disgraceful flight of our troops will do us more injury, and is more to be regretted, than the loss of fifty thousand men. It will impart new life, courage, and confidence to our enemies. They will say to their troops: "You see how these scoundrels run when you stand up to them."

SOURCE: John Beatty, The Citizen-soldier: Or, Memoirs of a Volunteer, p. 35-6

Diary of Lieutenant-Colonel John Beatty: July 29, 1861

Was slightly unwell this morning; but about noon accompanied General Reynolds, Colonel Wagner, Colonel Heffron, and a squad of cavalry, up the valley, and returned somewhat tired, but quite well. Lieutenant-Colonel Owen was also of the party. He is fifty or fifty-five years old, a thin, spare man, of very ordinary personal appearance, but of fine scientific and literary attainments. For some years he was a professor in a Southern military school. He has held the position of State Geologist of Indiana, and is the son of the celebrated Robert J. Owen, who founded the Communist Society at New Harmony, Indiana. Every sprig, leaf, and stem on the route suggested to Colonel Owen something to talk about, and he proved to be a very entertaining companion.

General Reynolds is a graduate of West Point, and has the theory of war completely; but whether he has the broad, practical common sense, more important than book knowledge, time will determine. As yet he is an untried quantity, and, therefore, unknown.

SOURCE: John Beatty, The Citizen-soldier: Or, Memoirs of a Volunteer, p. 35-7

Diary of Lieutenant-Colonel John Beatty: July 30, 1861

About two o'clock P. M., for want of something better to do, I climbed the high mountain in front of our camp. The side is as steep as the roof of a gothic house. By taking hold of bushes and limbs of trees, after a half hour of very hard work, I managed to get to the top, completely exhausted. The outlook was magnificent. Tygart's valley, the river winding through it, and a boundless succession of mountains and ridges, all lay before me. My attention, however, was soon diverted from the landscape to the huckleberries. They were abundant; and now and then I stumbled on patches of delicious raspberries. I remained on the mountain, resting and picking berries, until half-past four. I must be in camp at six to post my pickets, but there was no occasion for haste. So, after a time, I started leisurely down, not the way I had come up, but, as I supposed, down the eastern slope, a way, apparently, not so steep and difficult as the one by which I had ascended. I traveled on, through vines and bushes, over fallen timber, and under great trees, from which I could scarcely obtain a glimpse of the sky, until finally I came to a mountain stream. I expected to find the road, not the stream, and began to be a little uncertain as to my whereabouts. After reflection, I concluded I would be most likely to reach camp by going up the stream, and so started. Trees in many places had fallen across the ravine, and my progress was neither easy nor rapid; but I pushed on as best I could. I never knew so well before what a mountain stream was.

I scrambled over rocks and fallen trees, and through thickets of laurel, until I was completely worn out. Lying down on the rocks, which in high water formed part of the bed of the stream, I took a drink, looked at my watch, and found it was half-past five. My pickets were to be posted at six. Having but a half hour left, I started on. I could see no opening yet. The stream twisted and turned, keeping no one general direction for twenty rods, and hardly for twenty feet. It grew smaller, and as the ravine narrowed the way became more difficult. Six o'clock had now come. I could not see the sun, and only occasionally could get glimpses of the sky. I began to realize that I was lost; but concluded finally that I would climb the mountain again, and ascertain, if I could, in what direction the camp lay. I have had some hard tramps, and have done some hard work, but never labored half so hard in a whole week as I did for one hour in getting up that mountain, pushing through vines, climbing over logs, breaking through brush. Three or four times I lay down out of breath, utterly exhausted, and thought I would proceed no further until morning; but when I thought of my pickets, and reflected that General Reynolds would not excuse a trip so foolish and untimely, I made new efforts and pushed on. Finally I reached the summit of the mountain, but found it not the one from which I had descended. Still higher mountains were around me. The trees and bushes were so dense I could hardly see a rod before It was now seven o'clock, an hour after the time when I should have been in camp. I lay down, determined to remain all night; but my clothing was so thin that I soon became chilly, and so got up and started on again. Once I became entangled in a wilderness of grapevines and briers, and had much difficulty in getting through them. It was now half-past seven, and growing dark; but, fortunately, at this time, I heard a dog bark, a good way off to the right, and, turning in that direction, I came to a cowpath. Which end of it should I take? Either end, I concluded, would be better than to remain where I was; so I worked myself into a dog-trot, wound down around the side of the mountain, and reached the road, a mile and a half south of camp, and went to my quarters fast as my legs could carry me. I found my detail for picket duty waiting and wondering what could so detain the officer of the day.

SOURCE: John Beatty, The Citizen-soldier: Or, Memoirs of a Volunteer, p. 37-9

Diary of Lieutenant-Colonel John Beatty: July 31, 1861

The Fifteenth Indiana, Colonel Wagner, moved up the valley eight miles.

The sickly months are now on us. Considerable dysentery among the men, and many reported unfit for duty.

My limbs are stiff and sore from yesterday's exercise, but my adventure proves to have been a lucky one. The mountain path I stumbled on was unknown to us before, and we find, on inquiry, that it leads over the ridges. The enemy might, by taking this path, follow it up during the day, encamp almost within our picket lines without being discovered, and then, under cover of night, or in the early morning, come down upon us while we were in our beds. It will be picketed hereafter.

A private of Company E wrote home that he had killed two secessionists. A Zanesville paper published the letter. When the boys of his company read it they obtained spades, called on the soldier who had drawn so heavily on the credulity of his friends, and told him they had come to bury the dead. The poor fellow protested, apologized, and excused himself as best he could, but all to no purpose. He is never likely to hear the last of it.

I am reminded that when coming from Bellaire to Fetterman, a soldier doing guard duty on the railroad said that a few mornings before he had gone out, killed two secessionists who were just sitting down to breakfast, and then eaten the breakfast himself.

SOURCE: John Beatty, The Citizen-soldier: Or, Memoirs of a Volunteer, p. 39-40

Diary of Private Richard R. Hancock: Tuesday, April 1, 1862

Two gun-boats and three transports came up and landed some troops at Eastport and Chickasaw, after firing a few shots at the former place. There was a picket guard from our battalion at the latter place. One of our picket reported to Colonel McNairy, while the others withdrew to a neighboring hill, from which they could watch the movements of the Federals. About dark the battalion mounted and moved out in the direction of Chickasaw. The advance guard, having gone on to the river, and finding that the Federal boats, after taking the troops aboard again, had been withdrawn, met the battalion two miles from the river. So we all returned to camps without a fight.

Our camp was moved out near the Bear Creek bridge.

SOURCE: Richard R. Hancock, Hancock's Diary: Or, A History of the Second Tennessee Confederate Cavalry, p. 139

Diary of Private Richard R. Hancock: Thursday, April 3, 1862

I and five others were on picket on the bank of the Tennessee at Chickasaw. About nine o'clock A. M. another gun-boat paid us a visit. She had eleven guns aboard. After spying round awhile, she went back down the river, without either landing any troops or firing a gun. The battalion moved to Iuka, and camped in the “Iuka Springs" lot, in the edge of town. There were a couple of nice mineral springs there.

SOURCE: Richard R. Hancock, Hancock's Diary: Or, A History of the Second Tennessee Confederate Cavalry, p. 139

Diary of Private Richard R. Hancock: Saturday, April 5, 1862

The battalion moved to a nice camping place in an old field, one mile west of luka, where it remained about eleven days.

SOURCE: Richard R. Hancock, Hancock's Diary: Or, A History of the Second Tennessee Confederate Cavalry, p. 139-40