An Artilleryman's Diary, by Jenkin Lloyd Jones 1
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
An Artilleryman's Diary, by Jenkin Lloyd Jones 1 An Artilleryman's Diary, by Jenkin Lloyd Jones The Project Gutenberg EBook of An Artilleryman's Diary, by Jenkin Lloyd Jones This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: An Artilleryman's Diary Author: Jenkin Lloyd Jones Release Date: July 21, 2010 [EBook #33211] Language: English An Artilleryman's Diary, by Jenkin Lloyd Jones 2 Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AN ARTILLERYMAN'S DIARY *** Produced by David Edwards, Stephen H. Sentoff and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive) AN ARTILLERYMAN'S DIARY [Illustration: Jenkin Lloyd Jones] Wisconsin History Commission: Original Papers, No. 8 AN ARTILLERYMAN'S DIARY BY JENKIN LLOYD JONES Private Sixth Wisconsin Battery WISCONSIN HISTORY COMMISSION FEBRUARY, 1914 TWENTY-FIVE HUNDRED COPIES PRINTED Copyright, 1914 The Wisconsin History Commission (in behalf of the State of Wisconsin) Opinions or errors of fact on the part of the respective authors of the Commission's publications (whether Reprints or Original Narratives) have not been modified or corrected by the Commission. For all statements, of whatever character, the Author alone is responsible. DEMOCRAT PRINTING CO., STATE PRINTER An Artilleryman's Diary, by Jenkin Lloyd Jones 3 CONTENTS PAGE WISCONSIN HISTORY COMMISSION ix AUTHOR'S PREFACE xi AN ARTILLERYMAN'S DIARY: First impressions 1 Up and down the Mississippi and Yazoo 35 Encircling Vicksburg 48 The siege of Vicksburg 59 A well-earned rest 78 At work again 92 En route to Chattanooga 102 With Grant at Chattanooga 132 In winter quarters 148 On to Atlanta 221 Watching Hood 268 Wintering at Nashville 289 Garrisoning Chattanooga 303 Victory 318 Awaiting discharge 338 Homeward bound 358 Home at last 363 INDEX 369 ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE Portrait of the Author Frontispiece A Group of Comrades 128 A Group of Officers 250 Entry in diary, December 20, 1864. Photographic facsimile 290 Portraits of Author taken in 1862, 1863, 1865 358 Group of Sixth Wisconsin Battery, taken in 1897 364 WISCONSIN HISTORY COMMISSION An Artilleryman's Diary, by Jenkin Lloyd Jones 4 (Organized under the provisions of Chapter 298, Laws of 1905, as amended by Chapter 378, Laws of 1907, Chapter 445, Laws of 1909, Chapter 628, Laws of 1911, and Chapter 772, Section 64, Laws of 1913) FRANCIS E. McGOVERN Governor of Wisconsin CHARLES E. ESTABROOK Representing Department of Wisconsin, Grand Army of the Republic MILO M. QUAIFE Superintendent of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin CARL RUSSELL FISH Professor of American History in the University of Wisconsin MATTHEW S. DUDGEON Secretary of the Wisconsin Free Library Commission * * * * * Chairman, Commissioner Estabrook Secretary and Editor, Carl Russell Fish Committee on Publications, Commissioners Dudgeon and Fish AUTHOR'S PREFACE Whatever value this publication may have, lies in the fact that it offers a typical case--a small cross section of the army that freed the slave and An Artilleryman's Diary, by Jenkin Lloyd Jones 5 saved the Union. The Editor of the Commission's publications has asked me to state briefly something about myself. I am one of the multitude of "hyphenated" Americans, born across the water but reared under the flag. I am a Cambro-American, proud of both designations, and with abundant heart, loyalty, and perhaps too much head pride in both. Introduced to this world in Llandyssul, Cardiganshire, Wales, November 14, 1843, I celebrated my first anniversary by landing at Castle Garden, in New York City. My parents were sturdy "come-outers" who, after the manner called "heresy", even among Protestants, worshipped the God of their fathers. They came from what in orthodox parlance was known as the "Smwtyn Du" the heretical "black-spot" in Wales. I am the third Jenkin Jones to preach that liberal interpretation of Christianity generally known as Unitarianism. The first Jenkin Jones preached his first heretical sermon in his mother's garden way back in 1726, ninety-three years before Channing preached his Baltimore sermon (1819), from which latter event American Unitarianism generally dates its beginning. My father was a prosperous hatter-farmer--making hats for the local markets during the winter months, tilling his little ten-acre farm during the summer time. My parents were lured to America by the democracy here promised. In our family, freedom was a word to conjure by. Hoping for larger privileges for the growing family of children, they brought them to the New World, the world of many intellectual as well as material advantages. The long sea voyage of six weeks in a sailing vessel, interrupted by a dismantling storm which compelled the ship to return for repairs after two weeks sailing, brought them into the teeth of winter, too late in the season to reach their objective point in the West. So the journey was suspended and the first winter spent in a Welsh settlement near Steuben, New York. May, 1845, found us in the then territory of Wisconsin. The broad, fertile, and hospitable open prairie country in southern Wisconsin was visited and shunned as a desert land, "a country so poor that it would not grow a horse-switch." And so, three "forties" of government land were entered in An Artilleryman's Diary, by Jenkin Lloyd Jones 6 the heavy woods of Rock River valley, forty miles west of Milwaukee, midway between Oconomowoc and Watertown, which then were pioneer villages. The land was bought at $1.20 an acre, then were purchased a yoke of oxen and two cows; and when these were paid for, there remained one gold sovereign ($5) to start life with--father, mother, and six children. Trees were felled for the log house which for the first six months was roofed with basswood bark, for the shingles had not only to be made, but the art of making them had to be acquired. In this log house were spent the first twelve remembered years of my life. In it four more children were born. In the log school-house, built in the middle of the road because it was built before the road was there--we had arrived before the surveyor--I learned to speak, read, and love the English language. My first teacher was a Cambro-American who could by her bi-lingual accomplishment ease the way of the little Welsh immigrant children into English. I think I can remember crying when the teacher would speak to me in the then unintelligible English. In 1856, my thirteenth year, the family began to realize that they had chosen a hard place in which to make a home. The battle would have been a grim one, with the tall trees and their stumps, the "hardhead" boulders, the marshes, the mosquitoes, and the semi-annual attack of ague, had it not been lightened with the blind hopes and the inspirations that bring to frontier lives the consolations and encouragements of the pioneer. So the home in Ixonia, that had welcomed the coming of the first plank-road and witnessed the approach of the La Crosse & Milwaukee Railroad as far as Oconomowoc, was sold, and in 1855 we moved to a farm of 400 acres in Sauk County. The next year this was reached by the old Milwaukee & Mississippi Railroad and the village of Spring Green was established, adjoining the farm. Here I worked on the farm in the summer time, and during the winter time grew with the growing village school in Spring Green. During the spring term of school, in 1861, the boys were organized into the Spring Green Guards. "Billy" Hamilton, a clerk in George Pound's store, was excused by his employer during the noon hour and the recesses, to come An Artilleryman's Diary, by Jenkin Lloyd Jones 7 over to drill us. The tresses, black or golden, were sacrificed. Our hair was "shingled" and we wore cadet caps. Of course the boys had been stirred when they heard of the humiliation preceding the inauguration of Lincoln, of the firing on Sumter; and in the autumn all of the Spring Green Guards who were ripe enough heard and heeded the call of Father Abraham. Captain "Billy" Hamilton went out as sergeant in the 6th Wisconsin Battery, and four years later came back as colonel at the head of the 36th Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry. I was too young to go out in 1861. I cannot say that I panted for the fray. I dreaded the coming of the dire moment when conscience, not the government, would deliver me into a service that had no charm for me. Another winter's schooling in the Spring Green Academy, another sowing and harvest time, then leaving unstacked the hay that I had mown, and in the shocks the oats that I had cradled, I obeyed this "stern daughter of the voice of God"--to use Wordsworth's phrase--and turned my face to the South. I joined my old comrades of the Spring Green Guards in the 6th Wisconsin Battery, nine months or so after their first enlistment. I was a "mother's boy", and with the exception of three months' district schooling at an aunt's house in Watertown, when a little lad, had never been away from home over night. I had not then and have not since, owned a firearm of any description.