"We have lost Atlanta."

Saturday, September 17, 1864, Jackson Hospital

Here in this hospital, it does not rain or snow on me. I am dry. The stoves do not run out of wood.The sustenance is not the Spottswood but it is better than what we were issued in the trenches. There is fresh bread when there is flour. There is some coffee but not much. The meat is mostly not blue. As there is much paperwork here, there is much ink. I must remember to "requisition" some when I leave. If we listen carefully, we can hear gunfire in the distance. We know that none of it can reach us. We are safe here.

I do not wish to stay here. In spite of all the conditions here, I want to go home. Home is back in the company with my pards. I miss them all.This is no place for a soldier. I cannot defend my country from here. I want to go back to the trenches where I can do some good. A surgeon said that in three or four days, I might be released.

It was the cold that sent me here. That and Assistant Surgeon Willis, that is. A good many of us were suffering from the effects of too many working parties on the trenches in the cold. Firewood is hard to come by. We used up all the nearby woods early on. We go further and further afield to get firewood. 

One morning, during sick call, eighteen of us including Sergeant Major Steele, reported to First Sergeant Wade to be taken for examination by the surgeon.He was not there so Willis took over for him. Six of us were deemed sick enough to be sent to Richmond. The others not so selected were to be made well within the division hospital.

It was not a long ride on the railroad as far as distance was concerned but it took almost two hours to arrive at the Richmond station. In better days, it would have taken only some forty minutes. There was no one hawking anything during the trip much to our disappointment.

I was assigned a bed next to Creighton in one of the wards. He has the rheumatism and I have bronchitis. We were preceded by some other Hornets including Blackmon and Sims.
Sims is now dead. His wounds last month eventually cost him a leg and that cost him his life. I saw him only a couple of hours before he passed into the next world. Blackmon looks to be healing nicely from his wound.

There are some entertainments here. There is a library of sorts. The religious tracts are well-worn.  One may read popular novels like Maid of Esopus and Massasoit's Daughter as well as the newspapers. There is news from the west. We have lost Atlanta. It belongs to Sherman and Lincoln now. Joe Johnston was replaced by the gallant Hood. He was shot up rather badly at Gettysburg and Chickamauga but that did not stop him from taking over our western army.  One Richmond paper has said that the fall is a trifling affair. Hood has pluck and will know how to deal with Sherman.

Our General Lee has pluck and more. He knows how to handle Grant. 


I Send You These Few Lines.


It is now the autumn of fourth year of the war. The news is not good for the nation calling itself the Confederate States of America. Atlanta has gone up. The nation is split in two up the Mississippi. Losses on both sides have gone far beyond appalling. The North can replace theirs. The Confederacy can not. Supplies of all sorts are scarce. The lack of adequate rations has reached desperate proportions. The list of problems and shortcomings is long.

Still, the Confederacy yet exists. As long as her armies are in the field, she lives. Lee's army has repeatedly demonstrated that in spite of every hardship that is thrown at it, it can continue to bloody Grant's nose. Give Lee a chance and he will hurt the Yankees.

The western army of the Confederacy does not share the same level of success as the eastern army does. The Army of Tennessee, under a succession of commanders, has been driven from its' homeland with little hope or ability to return. The last commander, Joseph E. Johnston, has been removed by President Davis. John Bell Hood, formerly a division commander in Lee's army, will now get a chance to show what he can do.

Hood is, indeed, shot up rather badly. At Gettysburg, his left arm was wounded so badly that it was useless. At Chickamauga, another wound cost him his right leg.

Tooms' comment about the fall of Atlanta being a trifling affair is from the Richmond Daily Examiner of September 5, 1864. The two novels mentioned, currently available in reprint, were  forerunners of the post-war dime novel era.

Of the people mentioned in this diary entry, all were on the muster rolls at the time. The rolls show that George M. Creighton was in Richmond's Jackson Hospital at this time with rheumatism. The sergeant major of the regiment, Joseph N. Steele, was also absent, sick at this time but where he was sent is not recorded. Wesley Blackmon, also in the same hospital, was recovering from a wound suffered in August. That same month, Garrett Sims suffered a wound which caused the amputation of his leg at the same hospital. Unlike Creighton, poor Sims did not survive.

The material on firewood is sources from the brigade historian, J.F.J. Caldwell.

The third quarter of 1864 is just about over. The last quarter will see some changes that will be recorded by Tooms in his diary. There will be other changes that will not be so recorded. These changes will be in this blog itself and these changes in the 21st century will be driven by historical circumstances of the 19th.