In the evening, Feb 11th, 1863I wrote to Lee the day we left about going to see Vicksburg, the canal. The troops camped down there are really to be pitied. They are camped in the mud and water knee deep, and have very hard duty to do, working on the canal, standing picket, and making roads. I cannot imagine why they do not have negroes to do it, especially in a county like this where every person is Secesh and have pleny of negroes, and why not take them and put them at work. In the last day or two before I was there, they had got two or three hundred of them and was fixing to put them at work. It is better late than never, but our soldiers had been working there for weeks, and there is not a negro working here on the canal. It is all soldiers that is doing the work, and hundreds of negroes around here would be glad to be taken and put to work. Is it any wonder the rebellion is flourishing as a green hay tree? There was a small fight about two miles further out yesterday before we got here. A band of four hundred Rebels attacked a foraging train guarded by fifty of the First Kansas Infantry. They (Kansas) held their ground till reinforcements was sent out, and then pitched in and flaxed the shit out of them.
©2006 C.S. Parkinson