April 13, 1864

April 13, 1864

---Sergeant Alexander G. Downing, of the 11^th Iowa Infantry Regiment, is at home on furlough, helping his father put in the crops:

Wednesday, 13th—It is cloudy and very cool. I helped father put in his wheat today, harrowing all forenoon and drilling in wheat in the afternoon. James Kelley, a soldier of the neighborhood, home on a furlough, came over to help me out for a few days.

 

---A ghastly report from the newspaper Missouri Democrat details atrocities all too common in the internecine warfare typical for Missouri at this point in the war:

Last night the notorious bushwhacking gang of Shumate and Clark went to the house of an industrious, hard-working German farmer, named Kuntz, who lives some twenty-five to thirty miles from the mouth of Osage River, in Missouri, and demanded his money. He stoutly denied having any cash; but the fiends, not believing him, or perhaps knowing that he did have some money, deliberately took down a wood-saw which was hanging up in the cabin, and cut his left leg three times below and four times above the knee, with the saw. Loss of blood, pain, and agony made the poor fellow insensible, and he was unable to tell where the money was concealed. His mangled body was found to-day, life extinct. A boy who lived with him, succeeded in making his escape, terror-stricken, to give the alarm. After leaving Kuntz’s, the gang went to an adjoining American farmer, and not succeeding in their demands for money, they destroyed every thing in and about the place, took the man out, and literally cut his head off.—Missouri Democrat.

 

---Blockade runners captured:  The Mandoline, off the coast of Florida, is captures by the USS Nyanza; the Rebel sloop Rosina is captured off the Texas coast today by the USS Virginia; and the British-owned Maria Alfred, is captured at sea by the USS Rachel Seaman.

 

---Lt. Gen. James Longstreet and his troops, released from duty in East Tennessee, have arrived in the vicinity of Charlottesville, Virginia, and preparing to join with Lee in the coming spring campaign.