[
429]
drizzling rain making worse roads for our tired and hungry horses, two days were consumed in reaching that point, there to learn that the rations had been sent seventeen miles further.
We remedied this unpromising state of affairs by ‘borrowing’ two or three boxes of hard-tack from the rear of some wagons bound for the Twenty-fourth Corps.
These carried us through, but our poor horses were compelled to stagger on without forage, many, as the Report indicates, falling in their tracks, their places being filled, if at all, by picked — up animals almost equally exhausted.
A deep stream, skirted with mud, at last compelled us to ‘expend’ and bury much of our ammunition in order to cross.
By nightfall we had made not over eight miles, but we met a train, sent back from Burkesville Junction, with rations and forage at this time, which comforted man and beast in great measure.
We reached the Junction next day, and went into camp on high ground, remaining two weeks awaiting the surrender of Johnston's army.
Meanwhile the paroled Rebel soldiers streamed along the railroad at our feet, bound homeward.
While here, our keen satisfaction at the closing of the war was turned into the deepest anguish by tidings of President Lincoln's assassination.
I need not describe how the bravest men shed tears at the thought that this great soul, who had piloted the nation through its terrible travail for liberty and union so wisely, should now, just as he was about to enter into the enjoyment of the fruits of his labors, be laid low in so foul a manner; nor how, before full details were received, every man was fired with a disposition to continue the war till all vestiges of Rebellion were wiped from existence.
Death invaded our ranks here for the last time,
