September 25, 1862

September 25, 1862:  Gen. Bragg’s plan for Kentucky has not worked out.  He had originally conceived of having Kirby-Smith, Price, and Van Dorn all join him in Kentucky, which would have given him nearly 60,000 troops---or more, if Kirby-Smith could get all his men there.  But Price and Van Dorn have gotten themselves tied up on northern Mississippi trying to outwit Grant. 

---Somehow, Gen. Buell and his army are able to slip around Bragg’s western flank and slips into Louisville on this date.  However, Buell’s stock has fallen in the North, and he is attacked in the Press for going soft on the Rebels, and for not using his army since the Corinth campaign finished.  As his overmarched and exhausted troops march into Louisville, the city greets them with celebrations, cakes, and drinks.  For days, nearly one-third of the Army of the Ohio is absent-without-leave as they go on a drunken rampage, abusing the hospitality of their greeters. 

---Sergeant J. Smith DuShane of the 100^th Pennsylvania Vol. Inf. Reg., writes home to his to tell her of the wound he has received at the Second Battle of Bull Run:

My Dearest May,

God bless you dearest for your kind and encouraging letter, it came like a sunbeam to brighten my pathway. while reading it I forgot my wounds and pain and in thought I was again with my my little curly headed pet again. do you know darling that thoughts of the happy hours spent with you are the kindliest ones that come to cheer me in my hour of loneliness, why is this? what wierd enchantment is this with-which you surrounded me that scarce do my thoughts wander to my loved ere they wander to my little teaze. but I suppose that it is one of your mischiefous pranks so I’ll just grin and bear it.

---Confederate War Department clerk John Beauchamp Jones writes in his journal:

The Northern papers contain intimations of the existence of a conspiracy to dethrone Lincoln, and put a military Dictator at the head of the government. Gen. Fremont is named as the man. It is alleged that this movement is to be made by the Abolitionists, as if Lincoln were not sufficiently radical for them!

---Surgeon Alfred L. Castleman of the Army of the Potomac, writes in his journal, including this somewhat worrisome  note about the pain with his hand:

25th—Well, Gen. Lee is, safely to himself, out of Maryland, into which he came in the confident expectation of adding at least fifty thousand men to his army, but which he left with fifteen thousand less than he brought in.

My hand is excessively painful, though all constitutional symptoms have left. Suppuration has fairly set in, and I no longer feel any uneasiness as to results.