Sunday, June 28th. Morning cloudy. About 9 o’clock it commenced raining, but we were soon moving. Went two miles, and then prepared to camp; but the stumps and brush were so thick that it was some time ere we were enabled to pitch the tents. This was one mile from Manchester, and near a large creek, called the Barren fork of Duck river.
In the morning we were again moving, but nothing worthy of note transpired for several days.
Saturday, July fourth, eighteen hundred and sixty-three. This is the eighty-seventh anniversary of our National Independence, and here we are engaged in civil war. What would our old Revolutionary heroes say, could they but look in upon us? Ah! little did they dream when they laid down the sword and gun, that this country would ever again have cause to maintain her honor by sword-blade and cannon’s mouth; yet, this curse has been entailed upon us, by the vandal hand of the South. And now, to-day we stand up in a cause just as pure and holy as that for which our fathers fought in days gone by. We battle for our country as a whole; it must not, it can not be divided. Yes,
We’ll battle for our own true flag,
We’ll fight for every star;
In town, on plain, or beetled crag,
Our cause we’ll thunder far.
But, already a light—faint though it be—breaks over our war-tossed homes, and ’tis slowly but surely expanding. Ere another year be passed, we hope to see its effulgent rays light up all the dark corners of our land. That light, is the light of Liberty and Union.
But to our Battery.
We were now camped in the woods near Elk river, and there was but little prospect of our very soon getting out, as it rained almost uninterruptedly for several days, making our condition far from enviable. Our wagons, which had been left at Manchester, arrived early in the morning, as also did the train from Murfreesboro with provisions, which was hailed with delight. But still we were to be kept on half rations, as we had been for some time back.
During the afternoon the writer of this received two boxes of “good things” from home, and the men all gathered around him with open mouths and straining eyes.
There being a little “mountain dew” in one of the boxes, on inspection, it made some of the men feel in better spirits, and rather more patriotic.
Thus passed the 4th of July, 1863.