" ...three crackers..."

Sunday, May 10, 1863, Heath's Store, Virginia

One more good day's march and we shall be in Richmond. Then, we may rid ourselves of the burden of these prisoners. We need to return to the army. Hooker may have been defeated but he is still on Virginia soil with a host. He may try something again and we will not wish to miss this one.

I had thought that the distance from Guinea Station to Richmond was shorter. It seems that we should have been to Richmond by now. When we were at the Station, I saw a cluster of buildings that looked to be belonging to a well-to-do family. I think that it was being used as a hospital as I saw an ambulance there.

It has been difficult keeping these prisoners fed. So many were captured without haversacks and thus without rations. The Commissary Department has provided some rations but too few to meet the need. Also, so many of the prisoners have no canteens. It has not been too hot on this march and it has rained quite a bit I have seen some Yankees try to catch the rainwater in their hats and caps. My canteen is empty right now as are several of the boys. Holton and the younger Barton have the canteens and are off looking for sweet water. 

We are hoping that we will be allowed to remain in Richmond long enough to fill our bellies. If I had a belt, I would boil it and eat it.

I have but three crackers in my haversack. The bacon was used up yesterday. I did have five but I gave two away, one each to two Yankees who had nothing, not even an empty haversack. Both were boys. One has his right hand bandaged and the other was swathed in bandages around his crown, there being only one eye showing. The one with the bad hand showed me an image of his two sisters. Both were quite pretty. One of them said that if they had their own Jackson, we would be their prisoners. It is all talk. 

General McGowan is wounded, we are told. Colonel Perrin of the Fourteenth now commands the brigade.

Since we have been separated from the army for several days, we have also been separated from all news. From the good citizens who have visited us as we stop on the march, they tell us that our Jackson has been wounded worse than we thought. They say that his left arm has been amputated. We hope that it is not as serious as all that. But even if it is true, once recovered, he will lead us to the next victory. 

I Send You These Few Lines

Beginning with this diary posting, I'm going to include this feature in the body of the blog proper, towards the end.

Will Tooms ever write an entry in his diary that does not mention food? No.

The Battle of Chancellorsville treated the 12th South Carolina very well. Since the regiment stayed out of the battle to do guard duty, there were next to no casualties. On the other hand, both Hooker's Army of the Potomac and the Army of Northern Virginia under Lee, fared much worse.

Hooker's army suffered 17,000 casualties, 1700 of them dead and 6,000 have been taken prisoner. Lee's army endured 13,000 with 1700 dead and 2500 prisoners. The North could easily replace these losses and the South could not. In some regiments, the casualty rate was one in three. Some were quite higher. 

These are just numbers, statistics on a tally roll but each number was an individual, a person much the same as are we. They all are our ancestors. For some of you following this blog, you are the direct descendants of they who fought there.

Guinea, sometimes spelled Guiney Station, was on the Richmond, Fredericksburg and Potomac rail line. The station was the assembly point for the Union prisoners being transported to Richmond. When Tooms saw an ambulance, he thought there was a hospital there. There was a hospital there, of sorts, with one singular patient.

Neither Tooms nor his pards could know that what was seen was an office on the Chandler plantation called Fairfield. Inside the office was Thomas Jonathan, "Stonewall", Jackson and those attending him, including his wife, Mary Anna Morrison Jackson and daughter Julia. Also in attendance were his surgeon, Hunter Holmes McGuire, the Reverend Beverly Tucker, cook and slave Jim Lewis, aides Sandie Pendleton and James Smith.  

They came there to tend to Jackson. They left there to bury him.