June 23, 1863
---Siege of Vicksburg, Day 32
---Siege of Port Hudson, Day 27
---Gen. Robert E. Lee writes
to Pres. Davis with a plan to divert Federal attention away from his movement
into Pennsylvania, which would look like this:
detach Gen. Beauregard with troops from North and South Carolina (since
recently diminished Federal troop strength there indicates no Northern
offensive planned there for the near future), and send this force up to the Rappahannock
River around Culpeper, to threaten Washington from that front.
---Maj. Gen. William S. Rosecrans,
commander of the Army of the Cumberland (U.S.), puts his army on the road out
of Murfreesboro to execute his planned campaign of maneuver against Bragg’s
Army of Tennessee at Tullahoma.
---Maj. Gen. J.E.B. (Jeb)
Stuart continues probing to discover the exact location of Hooker’s army, since
Lee has tasked Stuart with determining whether Hooker has crossed the Potomac
yet, or whether the Yankees will remain inactive. Lee’s discretionary orders are actually quite
ambiguous, and leave room for Stuart to ride north following Ewell’s path, or
to detach two brigades and take the rest for a ride around the Union army, which
he is undoubtedly eager to do. And yet,
he is expected to keep in touch with Ewell’s right.
---Gideon Welles, Lincoln’;s
Secretary of the Navy, writes in his journal of a Cabinet meeting this day, and
the apparent condition of the President:
Neither
Seward nor Stanton was at the Cabinet-meeting. Mr. Bates has left for Missouri.
The President was with General Hooker at the War Department when we met, but
soon came in. His countenance was sad and careworn, and impressed me painfully.
---British observer Lt. Col.
Arthur Fremantle writes in his diary concerning his visit to Winchester,
Virginia, and the damage done to it by the occupying Yankee forces:
I
understand that Winchester used to be a most agreeable little town, and its
society extremely pleasant. Many of its houses are now destroyed or converted
into hospitals; the rest look miserable and dilapidated. Its female inhabitants
(for the able-bodied males are all absent in the army) are familiar with the
bloody realities of war. As many as 5000 wounded have been accommodated here at
one time. All the ladies are accustomed to the bursting of shells and the sight
of fighting, and all are turned into hospital nurses or cooks.
From
the utter impossibility of procuring corn, I was forced to take the horses out
grazing a mile beyond the town for four hours in the morning and two in the
afternoon. As one mustn’t lose sight of them for a moment, this occupied me all
day, while Lawley wrote in the house. In the evening we went to visit two
wounded officers in Mrs ——’s house, a major and a captain in the Louisianian
Brigade which stormed the forts last Sunday week. I am afraid the captain will
die. Both are shot through the body, but are cheery. They served under
Stonewall Jackson until his death, and they venerate his name, though they both
agree that he has got an efficient successor in Ewell. . . . At no period of
the war, they say, have the men been so well equipped, so well clothed, so
eager for a fight, or so confident of success—a very different state of affairs
from that which characterised the Maryland invasion of last year, when half of
the army were barefooted stragglers, and many of the remainder unwilling and
reluctant to cross the Potomac.
---John C. West, of the 4th
Texas Infantry (in Longstreet’s corps in Lee’s army), writes to Miss Decca
Smith of South Carolina, detailing the miseries of an infantryman on a brisk
campaign march:
June
23rd, 1863.
To
Miss Decca Stark, Columbia, South Carolina:
Dear
Decca: Yours of the 6th inst., with one from Miss Nannie Norton of the same
date reached me about eight days ago, and I have not had a moment since to
answer you, and even now cannot tell whether I shall be interrupted before I am
half done this. I am writing on my knee, with everything packed ready to move
at the sound of the bugle. I wrote you last on the 6th of June from near
Culpepper Court House. On that day we took a hard march of eighteen miles
through the rain, and on very muddy roads. We halted about 10 o’clock at night.
I was wet and very tired.
There
was an order against making tires, as we were near the enemy, being on the same
ground on which Stuart fought them a few days afterwards. Of course I slept; a
soldier, if he knows his own interest, will sleep whenever opportunity offers,
but there were 10,000 or 12,000 men huddled on the side of the road in a
promiscuous mass, just as you have seen cattle about a barn lot; no one knowing
how much mud or filth he reposed in until the generous light of day revealed
it. It rained a good deal during the night and kept me thoroughly soaked. . . .
On
the 13th we received orders to be ready to march or fight, but it turned out to
be only a march of five miles, which we accomplished in an hour and reached
Cedar Run, the scene of one of Stonewall Jackson’s battles last August. There
were a great many unburied skeletons, presenting a very ghastly appearance.
There were forty-nine skulls in one little ditch. . . . A hand or a foot might
be seen protruding from the earth, here and there, to mark the last resting
place of the patriotic victims of this horrible war.
We
left this camp on the 15th and marched through Culpepper towards Winchester.
This was one of the hottest days and one of the hottest marches I have yet
experienced. Over 500 men fell out by the road side from fatigue and
exhaustion, and several died where they fell; this was occasioned by being
overheated and drinking cold water in immoderate quantities, and the
enforcement of the order requiring us to wade through creeks and rivers up to
our waists without the privilege of even taking off our shoes. I felt quite
sick and giddy with a severe pain in my head as I was climbing the hill after
wading the Rappahannock, but it passed off, and I kept with the company, though
I saw two dead men during the time and several others fall.
Oh!
how I would have enjoyed one of mother’s mint juleps then as we rested in “the
shade of the trees.” I slept gloriously that night on a bed of clover and blue
grass. . . . On the 16th we marched twenty miles without so much suffering,
though the day was very warm, and many fell by the way, and like the seed in
the parable, “on stony ground,” for we were getting towards the mountains. . .
.
All
the country we have passed through is perfectly charming, and I cannot see why
any Virginian ever leaves Virginia. All that I have seen so far fills my ideal
of the-”promised land.” On the 18th we marched to the Shenandoah, ten miles,
and waded it with positive orders not to take off any clothing. The water was
deep and cold. I put my cartridge box on my head. The water came to my arm
pits. We camped about a mile beyond the river. A tremendous rain drenched us
before night, so we were reconciled to the wading. My blankets and everything
that I had was soaked, except Mary’s daguerreotype, which Colonel B. F. Carter
took charge of for me. I slept in clothes and blankets soaked wet. On the 19th
we marched down the river about ten miles over a very muddy road, . . . and
here about dark we experienced the hardest storm of wind and rain I ever saw.
It seemed to me as if the cold and rain, like the two-edged sword of holy writ,
penetrated to the very joints and marrow. I laid down but did not sleep a wink
until about an hour before day, and woke up cold and stiff. More than half the
soldiers spent the night in a desperate effort to keep the fire burning, which
was done with great difficulty.
I
took off my clothes, one garment at a time, and dried them, and baked myself
until I felt tolerably well; but truly a soldier knows not what a day may bring
forth. Just as I was thoroughly dried, up came another cloud and soaked us
again, and then came an order to fall into line “without arms.” . . . we
discovered that we had been encamped in a cloud on the mountain top, right in
the heart of the rain factory, the summer resort of Æolus himself. . . . I have
quite a severe cold, though I am better to-day than I was yesterday. Don’t
write this to Mary. I hope we will soon get through our demonstrations and come
to the fighting part of the drama.
I have not heard from home
yet, though it is more than two months since I left Texas, and there are
several letters in the regiment of recent date. I understand there is a large
mail for our brigade at the Texas depot, in Richmond, awaiting an opportunity
to be sent to us.
