Monday, February 4, 2013

2/4/2013 cwn

4, Suitors, love, marriage and mortality, reflections of a young Cleveland woman


A sad and cloudy eve. Aunt Adeline is no better. Finished reading My Sister Minnie this eve. Rhoda was called on this eve to reject another of her not very numerous suitors, Mr. Smith. I do not know why it is that he fancied here among so many girls in Cleveland. She is not so pretty as others, but I lover her none the less for that. She is the sweetest sister I have, tho' Oh! how utterly desolate he looked as he turned and bade her good-bye. I do not envy him his feelings as he returns to his home this gloomy eve, neither his lonely ride which he has to take in order to break that hearthstone which will seem so dreary to him until he finds another that is worthy of that loved he placed on the shrine of my cold-hearted sister. Wonder if R. will ever marry, as yet she has never reciprocated anyone's (affection) [sic], neither told any they might dare to hope that has knelt to her. This world is nothing and yet we cling to it and its maddening pleasures as if they, when gained, could be retained forever in our unworthy grasp. How many hundred "castles in the air" have I built, and they all vanish, but the workman is too frail and her buildings are swept away by the first rude hand of adversity.

Diary of Myra Adelaide Inman

 

 

4-5, Unsuccessful effort by General J.E. Johnston to furnish the Army of Tennessee with fresh pork from the Confederate Commissary Subsistence Department in Richmond, Virginia

TULLAHOMA, February 4, 1863.


Hon. JAMES A. SEDDON, Secretary of War, Richmond:
This army is suffering from the use of fresh pork. It has no other meat. I respectfully recommend that it be permitted immediately to draw salt meat from Atlanta and fresh beef from Maj. [J. F.] Cummings, in Northern Georgia. He is salting beef. It would be better to salt the hogs which are eaten fresh here, and issue the beef fresh.


J. E. JOHNSTON, Gen.
[Indorsement.]


SUBSISTENCE DEPARTMENT, February 5, 1863.
The army in Virginia is in a critical condition for subsistence, and the supplies referred to at Atlanta and in Northern Georgia are needed for it, and are held for it, and it alone. It is, has always been, believed, and is still believed, by this bureau that the army lately commanded by Gen. Bragg, now by Gen. Johnston, is in a country the resources of which are less exhausted than those tributary to the Army of Virginia. The Army of Virginia in now on short rations. The Army of the West, it is believed, has all along had more allowed it than the order of the War Department of April 18 allows; and the chief commissary of that army has been written to, to report on that subject. If it is compelled to reduce its rations, it will be no worse off than the Army of Northern Virginia. Not a pound of the rations asked for by Gen. Johnston can be spared for his army; and if he is permitted to take it; it will be that much abstracted from an army far more in need of it than his own.
Very respectfully,


L. B. NORTHROP, [Commissary-Gen., C. S. A.]


OR, Ser. I, Vol. 23, pt. II, pp. 625-626.

 

 

     4, "In years gone, and not long ago, Tennessee was a paradise." o­ne writer's description of Civil War Tennessee

[From the Boston Traveler, Feb. 4, 1864]

The Desolation in Tennessee.

An enterprising adventurer, who has been o­n a tour in Tennessee of an extensive and somewhat dangerous character, o­n his return to Murfreesboro, writes, under date of Jan. 30, as follows:

In years gone, and not long ago, Tennessee was a paradise. Peace and plenty smiled; law and order reigned. How is it now? After a week's journey, I sit me down to paint you a picture of what I have seen. To the East and to the West, to the North, and to the south, the sights are saddening, sickening. Government mules and horses are occupying the homes--aye, the palaces--in which her chivalric sons so often slumbered.

The monuments of her taste, the evidences of her art, characteristics of her people, are being blotted from existence. Her churches are being turned into houses of prostitution, her seminaries shelter the sick and sore, whose griefs and groans reverberate where o­nce the flower of our youth were wont to breathe poetic passions and dance to the music of their summer's sun. Her cities, her towns and her villages are draped in mourning. Even the country, ever and always so much nearer God and nature than these, wear the black pall. Go from Memphis to Chattanooga, and it is like the march from Moscow in olden time. 

The State capitol, like the Kremlin, alone remains of her former glory and greatness. Let this point (Murfreesboro') be the centre, and then make a circumference of thirty miles with me, and we will stay "a week in the womb of desolation." Whether you go o­n the Selma, the Shelbyville, the Manchester, or any other pike, for a distance of thirty miles either way, what do we behold? o­ne wide, wild and dreary waste, so to speak.

The fences are all burned down; the apple, the pear and the plum trees burned in ashes long ago, the torch applied to thousands of splendid mansions, the walls of which alone remain, and even this is seldom so, and where it is, their smooth plaster is covered with vulgar epithets and immoral diatribes. John Smith and Jo Doe, Federate [sic] and Confederate warriors, have left jack knife stereotyping o­n the doors and casings, where these, in their fewness, are preserved. The rickets and the railings--where are they?

Where are the rose bushes and the violets? But above all, and beyond all, and dearer and more than all else--where, or where, are the o­nce happy and contented people fled who lived and breathed and had their being here? Where are the rosy cheeked cherubs and blue eyed maidens gone? Where are the gallant young men? Where are all--where are any of them?

But where are they gone--this o­nce happy and contented people? The young men are sleeping in their graves at Shiloh, at Corinth, at Fort Donelson, and other fields of so-called glory. The young women have died of grief or are broken hearted; the children are orphans. Poor little things, I pity them from my heart as look at them--black and white--for they seem to have shared a common fate, and like dying in a common destiny. Their lives--I mean the master and slave, and their offspring--seem to have been inseparably blended. In many cases I found two or three white children, whose parents were dead, left to the mercies of the faithful slaves; and again, I have seen a large number of little negro children, whose parents were likewise dead, nestled in the bosom of some white families, who, by a miracle, were saved from the vandalism of war. 

Southern Banner [Athens, Georgia] April 20, 1864.


James B. Jones, Jr.

Tennessee Historical Commission

2941 Lebanon Road

Nashville, TN  37214

(615)-532-1550  x125

(615)-532-1549  FAX

 

No comments: