USA > Wisconsin > Rock County > Beloit > Past made present : the first fifty years of the First Presbyterian Church and congregation of Beloit, Wisconsin together with a history of Presbyterianism in our state up to the year 1900 > Part 15
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Besides the enthusiastic meetings down town, we had student gatherings, speeches and war songs in the college chapel, now art room, 2d story, and amid rousing cheers one and another declared it his purpose to enlist.
When Henry D. Portert took that stand, it was suggested that he was too short for the U. S. requirement. At once a committee was appointed to take him out and measure him. Whether that committee stretched Henry or the truth or both or neither is immaterial. They promptly reported that he was exactly at the limit, five feet. (Tre- mendous cheering.) It should be added that he
ALFRED L. FIELD, Q.M.
+Now a missionary in China, Henry D. Porter, M. D. and D. D. His portrait is given in the group with his father, Rev. Jeremiah Porter, D. D., on page 177.
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was never sick, always ready for duty and did good service from the begin- ning to the end of his term.
Besides many of us town boys, thirty-one from the college classes (about half the whole number) and twenty-five preps enlisted in the 40th Regiment, Wisconsin Volunteers, called the Students' Regiment.
After several days drilling on the college campus, May 18th, with flags and cheers, we took the cars for Camp Randall (now the Wisconsin Univer- sity athletic field) at Madison. A ruddy young Norwegian sitting in a car seat near me said in a rather weak voice that his name was George Travis from Illinois. To our great surprise he was arrested and sent off that same evening, because the United States army does not enlist women. May 19, 1864. Last night we had our first camp supper, consisting of bread and coffee without milk or sugar, and then drew blankets and bunks for the night. My bed was a bare board and I slept soundly on it. May 20. Went to Madison University and from the top of the main building sketched our camp. The bar- racks look like cattle sheds on a fair ground. May 24. Larry Foote and Moffat Halliday are playing cards at my elbow and they slap the table so energet- ically that it roughens my writing. To that usual army game, however, the 40th adds chess and checkers, with many superior players. Yesterday we signed enlistment papers in triplicate. At our physical ex- - amination to-day, when the sur- geon canie to *W. H. Fitch he gave him a playful poke and said : " A man with your chest can go anywhere." Our college CHAPLAIN J. J. BLAISDELL. 1864. boys all passed. June 1. A dozen of us were furnished with muskets and bayonets and stationed at the prison where there are thirty prisoners, mostly deserters. We stood guard all night and found it chilly.
Sunday, June 5th. Chaplain Blaisdell conducted divine service in the open air behind the captain's quarters on the hill, and a choir of Beloit boys sang. June 7. This afternoon seven companies were sworn in. Our Co. B. was disposed of second. A lieutenant of the regulars, standing by Col- onel Ray, called off our names and unless he stopped us, each answering, " Here," marched down the front and formed in a line to the right. Four men from Beloit were refused. The oath was duly administered to the rest and we marched back to our barracks regular soldiers of the U. S. Hurrah !
*Now a prominent physician of Rockford, I11.
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8
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.
2043.
Camp Rendall
Madison Wis. Sketch taken from top of University Building, May 20, 1864, by W. r. Brown, Co. B. 40% Wis, Vol. L.u.S.
a semana santa teresaEa Ja.
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June 8. We have to roll out for roll call at 5 a. m., take two hours' drill in the morning, two more in the afternoon and often two hours' bat- talion drill after supper. This afternoon I was sent with *W. A. Cochran and three others to the hospital and we were set to pounding clothes in a barrel. Two hours of that work and one of carrying wood has saved us, however, from twenty-four hours' guard duty, in this rain. Soldiering begins to lose some of its romance. We have to obey orders. June 11th. To-day clothing and guns were issued. Each man got a woolen blanket, $3.25; rubber blanket, $2.48; dress coat, $7.00; pants, $2.50; shoes, $2.05; woolen shirt, $1.53; drawers, 90c .; stockings, 32c .; knapsack, $1.85; haver- sack, 33c., and canteen 41c. Amount in greenbacks, $22.62. The cap will be a dollar more. The whole allowance per man was $23.90.
Sunday, June 12th. This hot afternoon we went on parade in full accoutrements, with knapsacks packed. It was decidedly tiresome.
June 14. Called up at half past four a. m. We received rations for three days, hard tack, dried meat and cheese. At 8 a. m. we strapped on our knapsacks, marched to the cars and at last were ' off to the war.' Mil- ton Junction saluted us with flags and the firing of cannon. At Clinton Junction were friends and dear ones from Beloit, kisses, flowers, cheers and more cannon. At Harvard a young lady filled my canteen with coffee. More girls and flowers. Hurrah ! Reaching the old N. W. depot, Chicago, about midnight, we marched the longest way around to the Soldiers Rest on Michigan avenue, and stacked arms in the street. At 2 a. m., Mr. E. W. Porter, a Beloit graduate, furnished cigars for Co. B, and Mr. Clinton Babbitt gave us hungry fellows a feast. It was hot coffee, bread and butter and pie plant sauce, sponge cake and a dish of strawberries for each man. After speeches and cheers we marched to the cars and at 4 a. m., June 15, started south. Our progress was attended by enthusiastic demonstrations of loyalty. At every city flags were displayed and guns fired while young and old wished us Godspeed. All kinds of food, fruit and vegetables, including cabbages, were offered us. Old women waved their aprons and young ladies their handkerchiefs. Springfield was one continuous wave, and it was Hurrah ! Hurrah ! Hurrah ! all the way to Alton.
II. IN CAMP AND COMING BACK.
From Alton we steamed down the Mississippi and reached Memphis Sunday morning, June 19; temperature, 125 degrees, F. At 11 a. m., hav- ing strapped on knapsacks and shouldered arms, we marched through deep dust a long way 'round to a camp ground about two miles from the city limits. In woolen clothes and carrying about sixty pounds each, all found it hot indeed, but got there. tJack Lewis even carried F.'s gun along with his own. On arriving, parched with thirst, early in the evening several of us hunted up an old deserted well, buckled straps together and let down a canteen through weeds and broken curb to the cool water twenty feet below. When it was drawn up gurgling full and put to our dusty lips, then we learned the real meaning of the word Nectar. That first night all slept on the ground without covering.
" Camp Ray, June 20, 1864. Our mess consists of ten Beloit College *Son of Elder William Cochran. +Now a leading physician in Dubuque, Iowa.
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boys : Lyman Winslow, of '65; Fitch, Lewis, *Newhall, Fred Curtis and Brown, of '66; Porter and Smith, of '67; A. W. Kimball and F. Bicknell. We must do our own cooking for awhile, and all take turns. As chief of mess I have drawn a piece of pork, alias 'sow belly,' 11/2 pints coffee, 1 1/2 pints brown sugar, 1/2 peck of potatoes, 23 pint of salt, 14 bar of soap and 20 of the six-inch square crackers, called hardtack.
21st. After the usual drill we made of rubber blankets, etc., a mess tent and put up the sign, " Eagle Mess. No Smoking Aloud." For to-day's rations we have 123 pints of coffee and the same of sugar, 23 pint of vinegar and as much molasses, one quart of rice, one quart of beans, 14 bar of soap, one candle, twenty hardtack, and sow belly sufficient. Fitch, Kimball and I are the first cooks." During the night came a thunder-storm and a small river under our blankets. Good-natured Kimball and others turned out amid the downpour in the airiest possible costume and scraped a shallow trench about the tent. Next day several of us were sent to the city with a
GRIDIRON PICKET STATION, 1864. W. H. Shumaker at the left.
NOTE .- At Gridiron Picket Station the ground was low and very wet and muddy. Those before us had therefore made a kind of gridiron of poles, which were each about two inches in diameter and six feet long, the whole being set up some two feet from the ground. That was what we slept on and we were glad to get it to keep us out of the mud.
commissary wagon which we loaded with hay bales and the new tents. Managed to get three lemons, 25 cents, one-half pound white sugar, 15 cents, and a lump of ice, so our mess had a treat.
June 24. Sixty having volunteered for picket duty, we took thirty cartridges apiece, with three days' rations of hardtack, marched a mile or two from camp, and were then distributed in stations about thirty rods apart, three men at a station. We stand guard day and night until relieved,
*E. G. Newhall, a member of our church, later M. D. and Mayor of Galena. He died in IS88.
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each man taking his turn of two hours on guard and four off. It was said that those whose property we were guarding would not give or even sell us anything. Feeling ill, I tried the matronly colored cook of the nearest secesh mansion, and with kind words and a dime got a refreshing cup of tea. That evening Corporal F. went on the same errand. Reported that he marched up to the front piazza where the Atkins family were sitting, asked for a drink of water and they merely pointed him to the well. Said he saw unhealthy symptoms of their unchaining a savage-looking dog, so he left. In the still night during my guard from eleven till one, Comrade *Shumaker went over towards that same house jayhawking. Pretty soon there was a loud woof ! woof ! and S., rushing back empty-handed, with that dog after him, jumped the fence just barely in time. Early next morning visited that house again and made for the cook a small pencil-sketch of her little bare- legged grandson. After that nothing was too good and they gave me the
ON PICKET DUTY, JULY 2D, 1864, NEAR MEMPHIS, TENN. (Our guns were not quite as long as one of these seems to be.)
best the house afforded for breakfast. A colored lad called out, "Your relief's just done gone by," so I hurried back to my station convinced that those negroes were loyal. Sunday morning Chaplain Blaisdell preaches. We also have excellent evening prayer meetings, and what some prize far more now, a company cook.
July 1. Our rations for two days' picket service are a loaf of bread each, with a little sugar and coffee. On this picket one of us convinced a secesh cow that it was milking time and filled a tin cup. For this, his only act of foraging, he has since most sincerely repented not. We had to sleep on the ground if at all and be waked by falling rain. My sketch of that post
*He died the next August.
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shows Corporal Eben Kendall sitting disconsolately on the wet roadside with his feet in a ditch. The romance of war has vanished. Southern heat is steady and stifling. The standing guard alone one still hot night sug- gested these lines, to a familiar tune* :
I.
Oh, well do I remember my old Beloit home, The bird-house on the ridge-pole, where birds would always come; Rock River bright behind it, the busy street before. The vine-clad wall, those columns tall, the rose beside the door. Long years a call was sounded, of danger, through the land. Our fears proved not unfounded and many an earnest band Marched off to aid their country, with these among them then, So here are we in Tennessee, remembering home again.
CHORUS.
Loud praise in song that dear Wisconsin home, Though late and long a soldier you may roam. Low sing the song a sad and tender strain,
For here to-day, far, far away, we think of home again.
II.
Yet home's not in the old house or in the garden neat, Not bounded by the river nor by the bustling street,
But in the hearts of loved ones I find it, full of joy, Who, distant, still think oft of Will, the absent soldier boy.
To-night on post of danger a sentinel I stand,
To watch 'gainst hostile ranger and guard this little band Of comrades, silent, slumbering. The stars above mne wane As comes the day and, far away, I think of home again.
CHORUS.
Our chief danger, of course, was from short rations. The ditto hostile ranger was usually the southern mosquito, whose poisonous stab drew more northern blood than southern bayonets did.
"Sunday, July 10, occurred the first camp funeral. It was of a Mr. Small, Co. F. Before night army mules tramped through the yellow clay of his grave. Those hoof tracks were new in a double sense.
"Monday we went sixty miles east from Memphis on train guard to La Grange. Last week three Iowa soldiers were shot at by guerillas on this road. We lay at full length on the roof of our freight car, both sides of the ridge, with our guns leveled across it ready to fire either side. (After a train or two had been fired on, each freight sent out was provided with certain prominent copperhead citizens of Memphis, who were obliged to ride on the tops of the cars with the boys. Usually there was one such guest for each car. We let our man have a prominent place so that of any atten- tions bestowed upon us he would be sure to get his share. Deacon Oliver J. Stiles doubtless remembers several of those guests. )
" La Grange, Tennessee, must have been a beautiful town before both armies battered it. Now, however, the churches are in ruins and used for stables, many fine houses have been burned or blown up, most of the inhab- itants are gone, and the scene is one of desolation."
These letters, received from a boyhood playmate of Beloit about that time, explain themselves. He was in a battery company :
*"Little Nell of Narragansett Bay."
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" CAMP NEAR CLARKSVILLE, TENN., July 18th, '64.
FRIEND W .- At the battle of Rodgersville last November we lost our guns. In that East Tennessee campaign under Burnside we suffered for the want of something to eat. For months we did not see even a hard cracker. We had to kill a beef and fry the meat on sticks and eat it without salt as that article is very scarce in those parts. We had ear corn dealt out to us, two ears to each man for a day's ration. Out of the fourteen boys who left Beloit and went into this battery there are only two of us left.
THE SAME, August 6th, 1864.
FRIEND W .- In one battle we fought all day and got nothing but dent corn to eat. After leaving Knoxville last summer and fall we lived on just what we could pick up. But it is all for the best country that the sun ever shone on. I thank God that I am permitted to fight for it and enjoy health.
I have a cousin in your regiment, Co. I, 40th Wis., Oscar Bishop. We here are expecting an attack every day from the old Johnson command, eleven miles distant. We will give themi just as warm a reception as we can. In our last engagement we were badly whipped: we must expect to get the worst of it once in a while.
Occasionally we have a guerilla fight but it doesn't amount to much, only it is certain death to fall into their hands. One of our own boys got caught and was shot with three more out of the 83d Illinois.
Our captain told us last night that in less than six weeks we would all be before Atlanta, Ga., but I hardly think we will leave this winter."
He did, though, went all the way around with Sherman and is living in Beloit to-day.
The heat, which rose to 132 degrees, and some special exposure, brought me to the hospital sick with fever. A box came from Beloit and on waking one morning I found under my head a white pillow marked with the name of my mother. One must be sick in the army to appreciate such comforts. August 6, Sergeant Sherrill died and Bushnell August 10. and W. H. Shumaker, in the next cot to mine, August 13. Sunday, August 21st, we sick boys were waked by the boom of cannon. What's that ! " Forrest has attacked Memphis with his cavalry and artillery and our boys have gone ont." One invalid managed to dress, found that his gun seemed to weigh several hundred pounds, so started without it towards the firing. The 40th regiment was at the extreme front and under fire about three- quarters of an hour. A shell burst in a stump behind Co. B, and one of its fragments slightly wounded a lieutenant, Harson Northrup, doing no other damage. Forrest retreated, our boys marched back and some of them found that invalid on the road, they say, and brought him in.
On board the hospital steamer, Silver Wave, Sept. 9, 1864. " We left Camp Ray and Memphis yesterday and started north. Our boat is crowded with more than two thousand invalid soldiers. A few miles below Ft. Pillow we stopped to bury a boy of the 39th who died last night. At Cairo we buried four more. Lying on the bare upper-deck back of the smoke pipes, sick with fever, partly protected by my blanket from dew and falling cinders, what a joy it gives me at night to see that we are pointed towards the north star and are actually going home."
September 14. At Alton, Ill. we convalescents were packed in freight
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cars, as many as could lie in each, stretched crosswise on the hard floor. At every bang of the rough cars our fevered heads felt ready to split. Water was scarce on the way and welcome scarcer. We reached Chicago (where someone stole my canteen) on the evening of the 15th, when our term expired, were kept at Camp Randall, Madison, several days and then duly discharged. The boys of the 40th came home, some all the stronger, one to die on the day he reached home, and many to feel the ill effects of that summer for several years, but most of them no doubt better and wiser for their hundred days' service.
In The War With Spain, 1898.
Our church was represented by eleven volunteers, ten of them young men and the other a veteran of the civil war, Burritt W. Peck (see p. 124).
Their previous experiences of camp life had been mostly confined to such healthful surroundings as are depicted in the illustration given below. In fact, the young fellow there holding a gun was afterwards one of those who tried the military camping at Jacksonville, Florida.
Going almost directly from the pure air and clear streams of Wisconsin to the somewhat malarial situation of that camp, our northern boys could hardly be expected to escape the natural effects of the change and did not. Perhaps some also were careless as to diet and drink. The fact, however, that out of the one hundred and five members of Co. E, nine died of illness and in each case from typhoid fever-such a fact is manifestly a sign of avoidable conditions.
When our boys left Beloit under orders as United States soldiers for two years, great enthusiasm was shown. Most of them, being in Co. E, 1st Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry, were sent promptly to the south and sta- tioned at Camp Cuba Libre, Jacksonville, Florida. There this well drilled regiment soon became a favorite with General Fitz Hugh Lee and was expected to go under his command to Cuba. When the war was virtually
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-
36
Co. E Volunteers Going to Cuban, Spanish War, May, 1898. Looking East, Corner of State and School Streets, Beloit, Wis.
ended Governor Schofield of Wisconsin, urged by many citizens, succeeded in having the 1st sent home early in the fall.
During that summer, especially the latter part, the Y. M. C. A. work was conducted in various tents belonging to the society, with encouraging results. Many of the soldiers became christians and many more were there permanently helped to better life.
The V. M. C. A. state secretary for Wisconsin, Mr. Anderson, went down and took hold of the work with others. One of the Beloit boys, a member of our church, was detailed as assistant to the regimental secretary and reports that the interest in those christian services was rapidly increas- ing. Just before the regiment started north a better association tent had been set up and their plans for large results of good were beginning to be realized. This was a somewhat new element in military life.
But the Wisconsin boys were all glad to get back and the enthusiasm with which they were received at Milwaukee and other home cities, especi- ally here at Beloit, even exceeded that which was shown at their departure.
The volunteers who went from our First Presbyterian church or con- gregation were :
*Fred Y. Hart, 2d Lieutenant, Co. E, 1st Wis. Vol. Infantry.
*John Chamberlain, private, 16
16 ..
66
*+Ira Thompson, 66
George Robinson, 66
*Church member. +Son of an elder.
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*Henry C. Key, private, Co. E, 1st Wis. Vol. Infantry.
(April 28 to June 28, 1898, then transferred to hospital service 2d division 7th Army Corps, and mustered out November 14, 1898. )
Harry M. Adams, private, Co. E, 1st Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry (April 28 to September 6, then transferred to same hospital service, made acting hospital steward October 29th and mustered out November 14, 1898).
*+Henry W. Robinson, joined Co. E in June, 1898.
** William W. Brown, joined Co. E. in June, 1898 (detailed as assistant to the regimental Y. M C. A. secretary ).
*Edward E. Holloway, private, Co. D, 7th Illinois Volunteer Infantry, June 22,-October 20, 1898.
Charles Willard, a former member of our Christian Endeavor Society, enlisted in Co. A, 1st Texas Volunteer Infantry. He is now ( December 15, 1899) a lieutenant in the 33d Texas, which is fighting the Tagals in the Philippine Islands.
Burritt W. Peck, enlisted in the war of 1898 and is now a carpenter in the regular army, stationed at Huntsville, Ala. (An older brother of Augustus R.) See also page 136, ninth line from the bottom.
Co. E reached home September 10th and was duly mustered out here at Beloit October 19th, 1898. None of the boys from our church or society died but the list of those in the company who did is here given as a token of our respect and remembrance.
DIED.
Sergeant Cassia J. Morris, at Milwaukee, Wis., September 11th, 1898, of typhoid fever. Home, Beloit.
Private Mace Mollestead, at Jacksonville, Fla., August 13th, 1898, of typhoid fever. Home, Beloit.
Private Clark Osgood, at Jacksonville, Fla., September 8th, 1898, of typhoid fever. His home was near Afton, Wis.
Private Frank Chipman, at Jacksonville. Fla., September, 1898, of typhoid fever. Home, Beloit.
·Private Jesse Gleason, at Jacksonville, Fla., September 22nd, 1898, of typhoid fever. He came from Monroe, Wis.
Private Fred Cousins, at Beloit, Wis., September 25th, 1898, of typhoid fever. Of Beloit.
Private James M. Mowers, at Darien, Wis., Feb. 1st, 1899. of typhoid fever. From Allen's Grove.
Private Gustav Wolline, drowned himself in Rock river, between Edgerton and Janesville, in the latter part of September when insane from typhoid fever. He was found in his uniform, the pockets filled with heavy stones.
Private Charles Ingleby, at Madison, Wis , January 1st, 1899, from typhoid fever. Home, Beloit.
" It is sweet and fit to die for one's country," but it is not sweet and fit for the nation to let its soldiers die from unnecessary and avoidable causes.
*Church member. +Son of an Elder.
#Son of the writer.
197
UST
Priv. Mace Mollestad. (Deceased.)
LIEUT. FRED Y. HART. LIEUT. R. C. MALTPRESS.
Corp. Chas. E. Ingleby. (Deceased.)
LIEUT. WM. H. BEACH.
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THE LOG OF THE GYPSY,
WITH SOME PERSONAL EXPERIENCES OF THE
GYPSY CLUB,
SEPT. 3D TO 20TH, 1877.
A CRUISE FOR HEALTH AND HAPPINESS, DOWN THE WISCONSIN AND MISSISSIPPI RIVERS.
PUBLISHED BY THE CLUB. Second Edition by W. F. B.
Ernest.
Walter.
Mrs. Mary Helm.
Arthur.
(The Gypsy Club was supposed to wholly ignore the opposite sex, who therefore should not read this Log. But we cannot well do without moth- ers, and the Gypsies are not ashamed of theirs.)
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B. C. GYPSY CLUB. 1877.
MEMBERS AND OFFICERS.
D. WAT. REDFIELD, Captain, Beloit, Wis.
W. F. BROWN, Chaplain, et al., Beaver Dam, Wis. ERNEST C. HELM, Steward and Treasurer, Evanston, Ill. WILL ABBEY, Cook, Beloit, Wis. THOS. K. HICKS, Rockford, Ill.
ARTHUR HELM, Beloit, Wis. WALTER HELM, Evanston, I11.
ED. PENFIELD, Beloit, Wis. W. SNOW, JR., Richland City, Wis.
PORT HAVEN, Chicago, Il1. ED. SEVILLE, Lodi, Wis.
Snap, Camp Guard, alias Leo.
BOATS.
"THE GYPSY," clinker built, sloop-rigged, 26 feet long, 612 feet beam, capable of carrying two and a half tons.
"THE ROVER," flat bottomed, ten feet long, three feet beam.
CAMP EQUIPAGE.
One army officers' round tent, ten feet high, sixteen feet across. A canıp chest (still in the author's possession ) four feet long and two feet high. The whole top casting of a cook stove, with its furniture.
ITINERARY.
(R.B. means Right Bank. L. B. means Left Bank. Wis. R. is Wisconsin river. Miss. R. is Mississippi river.
Days Journey il1 Miles.
Stations. Camps,
I. CAMP CONFUSION, R. B., Wis. R., Merrimac, Wis. .
0
II. CAMP FATIGUE, L. B. Wis. R., opposite Sauk City, Wis. . 15
III. CAMP COMFORT, R. B. Wis. R., two miles north of Helena, Wis. 30
IV. CAMP SUCCESS, R. B. Wis. R., just below Richland City, Wis. 21
V. CAMP VICTORY, L. B. Wis. R., 14 mile below bridge, Muscoda, \Vis. 13
VI. CAMP PLENTY, R. B. Wis. R., 3 miles above Woodman, Wis. 25 VII. CAMP PROGRESS, L. B. Wis. R., 14 mile above Bridgeport, Wis. 21 VIII. CAMP STORM, Island, Miss. R., S .- E. from S. McGregor, Iowa, 10 IX. CAMP ENJOYMENT, L. B. Miss. R., 6 miles below Cassville, Wis. 36 X. CAMP PATIENCE, L. B. Miss. R., one mile above Dunleith, Il1. 24 XI. CAMP FAREWELL, R. B. Miss. R., 2 miles above Savannah, Il1. 53 XII. Savannah, Il1. 2
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