Oct

31

October 31, 1862, A Rebel War Clerk’s Diary

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by John Beauchamp Jones

OCTOBER 31ST.—If it be not a Yankee electioneering trick to operate at the election in New York, on the fourth of November, the Northern correspondence with Europe looks very much like speedy intervention in our behalf.

Winder has really dismissed all his detectives excepting Cashmeyer, about the worst of them.

If we gain our independence by the valor of our people, or assisted by European intervention, I wonder whether President Davis will be regarded by the world as a second Washington? What will his own country say of him? I know not, of course; but I know what quite a number here say of him now. They say he is a small specimen of a statesman, and no military chieftain at all. And worse still, that he is a capricious tyrant, for lifting up Yankees and keeping down great Southern men. Wise, Floyd, etc. are kept in obscurity; while Pemberton, who commanded the Massachusetts troops, under Lincoln, in April, 1861, is made a lieutenant-general; G. W. Smith and Lovell, who were office-holders in New York, when the battle of Manassas was fought, are made major-generals, and the former put in command over Wise in Virginia, and all the generals in North Carolina. Ripley, another Northern general, was sent to South Carolina, and Winder, from Maryland, has been allowed to play the despot in Richmond and Petersburg. Washington was maligned.

Oct

31

War Diary of a Union Woman in the South - Wild Times in Mississippi

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edited by G.W. Cable

Oct. 31.—Mr. W. said last night the farmers felt uneasy about the “Emancipation Proclamation” to take effect in December. The slaves have found it out, though it had been carefully kept from them.

“Do yours know it?” I asked.

“Oh, yes. Finding it to be known elsewhere, I told it to mine with fair warning what to expect if they tried to run away. The hounds are not far off.”

The need of clothing for their armies is worrying them too. I never saw Mrs. W. so excited as on last evening. She said the provost-marshal at the next town had ordered the women to knit so many pairs of socks.

“Just let him try to enforce it and they’ll cow-hide him. He’ll get none from me. I’ll take care of my own friends without an order from him.”

“Well,” said Mr. W., “if the South is defeated and the slaves set free, the Southern people will all become atheists, for the Bible justifies slavery and says it shall be perpetual.”

“You mean, if the Lord does not agree with you, you’ll repudiate him.”

“Well, we’ll feel it’s no use to believe in anything.”

At night the large sitting-room makes a striking picture. Mr. W., spare, erect, gray-headed, patriarchal, sits in his big chair by the odorous fire of pine logs and knots roaring up the vast fireplace. His driver brings to him the report of the day’s picking and a basket of snowy cotton for the spinning. The hunter brings in the game. I sit on the other side to read. The great spinning wheels stand at the other end of the room, and Mrs. W. and her black satellites, the heads of the elderly women in bright bandanas, are hard at work. Slender and auburn-haired, she steps back and forth out of shadow into shine following the thread with graceful movements. Some card the cotton, some reel it into hanks. Over all the firelight glances, now touching the golden curls of little John toddling about, now the brown heads of the girls stooping over their books, now the shadowy figure of little Jule, the girl whose duty it is to supply the fire with rich pine to keep up the vivid light. If they would only let the child sit down! But that is not allowed, and she gets sleepy and stumbles and knocks her head against the wall and then straightens up again. When that happens often it drives me off. Sometimes while I read the bright room fades and a vision rises of figures clad in gray and blue lying pale and stiff on the blood-sprinkled ground.

Oct

31

Clothing for the Soldiers — Red Tape.

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October 31, 1862, Tri-Weekly Telegraph (Houston)

We have made several appeals to the people to provide clothing for the troops against the cold weather. We have received a great many letters from the people on the subject, all declaring an eager desire to do something, but all complaining of a want of means. “We want,” says one, “looms, spinning wheels and cards.” “It will take a long time,” says another, “to learn the use of spinning wheels.” “Why will not the Government let us have cloth from the Penitentiary?” “Why will the Quartermasters not issue us cloth to make up?” We could give a hundred such replies as these.

We have ourself tried a dozen plans to do something, and found to every plan an insuperable objection. Our plans having been direct mostly to the government officials, have been frustrated by a net-work of “red tape.” The quartermasters and agents are all tied up to system which is necessary to keep them honest. Human propensity is so strong to steal from the Government that no one can be trusted. Nobody, we are told, knows how this is till they try it. We are willing to take the observation for granted.

This system is red tape, and to follow one of these red tapes, let us find a cloth factory—stop, let us find a sheep pasture. Shearing comes on, and with it comes somebody who “has got a contract” to buy wool. It passes through his hands to another who “has a contract to transport the wool.” Now, after a long journey, most of it from Western Texas to Georgia, it goes into the factory and comes out doubtless by contract. It now reaches the quartermasters. Of course they cannot keep a factory and a hotel both, so they issue the cloth to contractors, and they to sub-contractors, and they sometimes to poor women, who sew for next to nothing and board themselves, and sometimes to their shop-hands who are exempted from military duty, and it is made into clothes.—Back it goes to the quartermaster, and off by another coil of red tape to the soldier. The result is, the clothing costs so much that the soldier is stinted at best. The quartermaster has more business than he can attend to, and does nothing. The Read more

Oct

31

“God bless the ladies of Virginia!”

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October 31, 1862, Tri-Weekly Telegraph (Houston)

Richmond, Va., October 8th, 1862.

“God bless the ladies of Virginia!” — Such will be the prayer of the mothers, wives, sisters and sweet hearts of the Texas Brigade; for when the gallant wounded were retracing their weary steps from the bloody battle-field of Sharpsburg, Md., across the river to Shepherdstown, the ladies in the vicinity came out into the public streets with wash-bowl, soap and towel, and there, before high Heaven, exhibited that peerless nobility of washing and dressing the wounds of our soldiers. Again I say, God bless the ladies of Virginia!

A. H. E.

Oct

31

The Women Forever.

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October 31, 1862, American Citizen (Canton, Mississippi)

Mrs. Nancy Vaughn, residing near Decatur, Georgia, arrested one of the “jail birds” who escaped from the Atlanta jail on the 16th. When Lieut. Col. Weems’ squad came up, our heroine had the “bird” under mortal fear of a double barrel shot gun, and a most submissive prisoner.

Oct

31

Discharged Soldiers.

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October 31, 1862, Nashville Dispatch (Tennessee)

About four hundred discharged soldiers left this city for Louisville yesterday, under a flag of truce. Several citizens also left town yesterday for the same destination.

Oct

31

Continuing High Prices

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October 31, 1862, Nashville Dispatch (Tennessee)

The complaint of the scarcity and consequent high price of marketing continues to increase. Parties who visit the market-house say the amount brought in for sale has fallen off very materially, and still continues to fall off. This is easily accounted for. While there is perhaps not so much produce in the country immediately around Nashville as in former years, there is still enough to afford supplies for a very good market, and at prices much more reasonable than are now demanded and paid. But the country people have got the impression among them, and not without cause, it must be admitted, that if they come or send to market with their produce, there is danger of a large portion of their produce being stolen by soldiers who seem to set all rules and regulations at defiance, and their wagons and horses impressed into the services of the Government. These things have been done, and they have deterred large numbers of country people from bringing their produce to market. What is wanting is an assurance from the military authorities, officially given, that their produce and their wagons and teams will be protected. Let the military authorities give this assurance publicity, and rigidly enforce it, and we will soon see quite a difference in the appearance of our market, and the prices which will be demanded. Such a step as this will benefit the laboring classes, whose wages are now absorbed in purchasing barely a sufficient amount of product to subsist their families. In the name of humanity, let something be done to benefit the poor people of the city by increasing and cheapening the produce they are necessarily compelled to have.

Gentlemen who are somewhat familiar with the country around Nashville some miles out, assure us that there is a great deal of produce held back for a market. If the holders of this produce could be induced to bring it to the city, it would contribute greatly to the relief of our people. The good prices they would realize, with the protection we have suggested, would, we are satisfied, induce them to bring it in. This is a question for the authorities to consider, and having made the suggestion, we leave it with them.

Oct

31

Clothing for the Army.

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October 31, 1862, American Citizen (Canton, Mississippi)

It is a settled fact, admitted on all hands, that our government cannot supply our soldiers in the field with clothing. It behooves us, then, to inquire, “Are the people doing all in their power to supply the deficiency?” We fear they are not. We fear that there is too great an indifference prevailing in the public mind on this all-important subject. If our armies are not fed and clothed, they cannot fight, and if they cannot fight and fight successfully, we are a subjugated people, beyond all peradventure. Let every one who has a relative in the army, to see to it that he is well clothed. Let them not rest night nor day till that is accomplished. Having accomplished that, let him or her then “not grow weary in well doing,” but go forward in the good work, and do all they can to clothe some other person who may not be so fortunate as to have relatives at home to care for them. You need not be afraid of doing too much. If the particular friend for whom you buy and sew should have more than he needs, rest assured he has a comrade in arms who is needy, and to whom he will turn over his surplus.

Since commencing this article our eye has fallen upon an article in the Richmond Whig on this subject, which we cannot do better than to transfer. The Whig, in referring to the army under General Lee, from which it has direct information, says that many of his soldiers have not changed their clothing since they left Richmond. They have slept in it, fought in it, crossed the Potomac in it, marched over dusty roads and through storm and sunshine in it; yet they have not changed it or washed it in all this time, because they had no other to put on when that was taken off. The reader will not be surprised to hear, therefore, that many of the troops are covered with vermin, and their clothing rotten and dirty beyond anything they have ever seen. There is no negro in the south who is not better off in this respect, than some of the best soldiers and first gentlemen in all the land. Read more

Oct

31

The Ladies in the Hospitals.

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October 31, 1862, American Citizen (Canton, Mississippi)

The Military hospital at Montgomery comprises four commodious brick tenements. It can accommodate one thousand patients. A correspondent of the Columbus (Ga.) Enquirer thus notices one feature of it:

A feature—a noble one too—is apparent in this hospital. Six angelic Sisters of Mercy attended solely at this hospital, and you can perceive a spirit of devotion and kindness in their mild, complacent countenances. They are from Mobile, and their names are Sister Mary Adelaide, senior, Sister Johanna, Sister Prudence, Sister Mary Elizabeth, Sister Agnes and Sister Anastasia.

These good women have devoted their lives to doing good, and may heaven reward them for the sacrifices they have made for the benefit of suffering humanity.

During the passage of Bragg’s army through this city, about seven hundred sick were left here and out of that number only twenty-two died, and it may be justly claimed a small per centage when most of the deceased were so far gone on their reception for treatment.

Recently a report was made to Congress of the condition of the hospitals in Richmond. It was shown that the mortality was astonishingly less in those establishments managed by women than in those where the other sex had sway. In one managed by the former it was only about three per cent. The lowest of those managed by the latter was about six per cent.

Oct

31

Fort Scott.

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October 31, 1862, Daily Times (Leavenworth, Kansas)

An article recently appeared in the Bulletin making very unfair statements about Fort Scott and the Government attaches at that post. It charges that the Fort “consists of some half dozen dilapidated wooden sun houses situated on an open prairie and not protected by fortifications, nor natural position,” “that the situation is unhealthy,” “that there is no good reason for continuing the post, except for the benefit of certain military gentlemen, who are pecuniarily interested therein,” “that it is situated only one hundred miles from Fort Leavenworth and therefore it is useless to make reshipment of supplies at that point.”

These statements are in the main grossly incorrect. Fort Scott consists of some of the finest, most spacious, and solid Government storehouses in the Western country. These structures afford the amplest room, and a security to the supplies stored in them equal to the best buildings at Fort Leavenworth. We are informed by gentlemen of high military skill that the location is admirably adapted to defense. The Army of the Frontier, which now numbers nearly 30,000 well disciplined troops, constantly covers the position from all danger of attack. In the successful management of an army of that size, reason indicates and experience demonstrates, that their base of supplies must be much nearer than the distance now intervening between the army and Fort Leavenworth. Fort Scott is the natural base, it has the facilities, and an abundance of supplies should be concentrated there.

The unhealthiness of the location is a mere theory of some medical quack. The sickness there is not any greater, in fact is not as great, as the average posts in the west.

As to the charge that the Fort is continued for the benefit of certain military gentlemen, we believe the statement to be wholly unfounded. We are creditably Read more