The cost which it took to make this grand American nation and republic can never be repaid, not even the interest at a low rate can be paid.
On the 2nd we received two months’ pay, and in the evening we had grand review. The weather was now getting very warm. We received orders to march and on the morning of the 5th, we got on boats and started down the river after our 2nd brigade. We ran down the river about one hundred miles and landed at Natchez, Mississippi.
We got off of the boats, marched back two miles, and went into camp. This was a nice country and camp, but water was the one drawback. We had to haul and carry water from the river.
We had a great deal of fun at this camp. We were quartered near a camp of five thousand freedmen who kept up music, dancing and singing day and night. They were as happy as the children of Israel when they were encamped in the wilderness, after they had been delivered out of bondage by Moses.
A heavy provost guard was kept in town, and many of our boys without passes were arrested and put in the guard house. They were soon sending for their captains to get them out as they were in a regular jail and had to look through iron bars.
We lay here until the morning of the 11th. We then got on boats and moved off down the river. We landed at Port Hudson, at six p. m. Our boat had sprung a leak and we got off and stayed on shore all night, waiting for it to be repaired. This place bore the marks of a hard siege, some very heavy charges having been made here.
On the morning of the 12th, we started on down the river. We landed at Carrollton, Louisiana. On the morning of the 13th we got off of the boats, marched back one and a half miles and went into camp.
On the 14th, one of the boys in our regiment, while trying to catch a chicken, was shot and instantly killed by a negro safeguard. The boys planned to take him out of jail that night and lynch him, but he was slipped out and I never heard of him afterwards.
We lay here until the morning of the 17th, when we moved down two miles. We went into camp in the lower edge of Carrollton, five miles above New Orleans. The next day Colonel Spicely joined us with the remainder of our brigade, and we all moved out and went into camp near the bank of the river.
A division of the army of 10,000 men, under General A. J. Smith, was “lent” to General Banks to assist him in his campaign against Shreveport and Texas.