Diary of Orrin Brown—Feb 14, 1865

Diary of Orrin Brown, on Cedar Creek near Pelion, South Carolina

Tuesday–Feb. 14th

We were on the road at 6 AM and we marched very steady all day. We crossed a small river at 11 AM and haulted about two hours for them to build a bridge so the train could cross we started out again about 1 PM and it commenced a drizeling rain just after we started and kept it up all the afternoon and it got so cold toward night that it froze and made a regular sleet. We went into camp about 5 PM and were wet and cold, got our tent put up and then had to move it again in the rain to get it off of the collor line. We marched 22 miles today. I read 3 Chapts. in the Testament.

At the start of the Civil War, William Tecumseh Sherman held out for a regular Army commission, rather than take charge of volunteers.  As a product of West Point, Sherman dismissed the ragged proletariat, assuming they would break and run as soon as battle broke out.  Appointed colonel of the 13th Regiment U.S. Infantry in May 1861, however, he was given command of newly recruited 3-month volunteers.  It was a rough start: He didn’t much like them, and they didn’t much like him.

The mutual feeling was reinforced after the disastrous rout at the First Battle of Bull Run (First Manassas) on 21 July 1861.  However, President Lincoln was impressed with Sherman, and promoted him to brigadier general, retroactive to 17 May 1861, and he was assigned to his friend Gen. Robert Anderson‘s command of the Department of the Cumberland at Louisville, Kentucky.  And so Sherman headed back West.

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