June 20, 1862

June 20, 1862:  Being frustrated by Beauregard’s continual retreating, Pres. Davis finds an opportunity to relieve the Creole of his command, since Beauregard has taken a leave of absence for his health.  Davis relieves Beauregard and promotes Braxton Bragg to command of the Confederate army in the western theater.

---The Richmond Daily Dispatch, bemoaning the nefarious practice of draft substitution, and how many will join for the bounty and then desert, offers a solution:

This evil has become so great that it should be immediately attended to, and some of the base follows summarily dealt with. There are two ways to put an end to the pernicious practice, In the first place, every man who offers to sell himself as a substitute should be looked upon with suspicion, and be arrested on the spot as a deserter, which in nine cases out of ten he will prove to be. Secondly, a few of them should be court-martialed and formally shot. After what has transpired, and the frequent warning given by the press, it would be the height of folly for any soldier to throw his money away upon these infamous scoundrels.

---Katherine Prescott Wormeley writes home to her mother about an incident in nursing the wounded and sick soldiers:

This afternoon, as I was attending to some men in the Sibley tents, I came upon one of the exhortative kind, who often afford us much amusement. He made a rapid survey of the history of the world, to prove that no women had ever done as we were doing, no men had ever been succored as they were succored. Whether he was out of his mind, or simply one of the irrepressible, I could not tell; but he looked so funny, declaiming in his hospital rig, that I slipped out of the tent, convulsed with laughter, — for which I felt sorry, and rather ashamed, a moment later, when I saw the tears in the eyes of a gentleman, new to the work, who was with me. But we must either laugh or cry; and this work teaches us that we had better laugh, if we mean to be good for anything.