Aug 2 - Fine hot day. At church (Pres[byterian]) a.m. and went on hill with tracts to camp and hospital p.m. Eve wrote to Ella for mail from here.
Aug 3 - Waited for boat and left on "Sallie Robinson*" for Memphis, fare $8.00. Small and few passengers. Write up all July journal to date.
Aug 4 - Pleasant sail down, Stopping at Fort Pillow*. At 4:30 Memphis here in sight and was some on the wharf. Got a carriage and rode to regiment. Warm welcomes.
Aug 5 - Mess with Col. Herrick and Major Park: sleep on floor of Col's tent for the present. Met acquaintances. The regiment seems quieter than formerly. Good clapboard quarters.
Aug 6 - Attend funeral of a child of a member of 32nd Wisconsin encamped near us about this time "Thanksgiving day". Attend dinner at Christian Commission rooms*. A pleasant time.
Aug 8 - Preparing for Sunday.
* Ralph Pomeroy Buckland was born 20 Jan 1812 in Leyden Massachusetts. His family moved to Ravenna Ohio the year he was born. He graduated from Kenyon College in 1838 and after passing the bar practiced Law in Fremont Ohio. He served as Mayor of Fremont from 1843-1845, and was a member of the Ohio State Senate from 1855 - 1859. At the outbreak of the Civil War he became Colonel of the Ohio 72nd Infantry and later commanded a brigade under General William Tecumseh Sherman at the battle of Shiloh in April 1862. He was commissioned a Brigadier General of volunteers on 29 November 1862 and served at the siege of Vicksburg in the Spring and Summer of 1863. He resigned from the army in January 1865 and returned to Ohio where he won a seat in the U.S. Congress where he served two terms from 1865-1869. He died in Fremont Ohio on 27 May 1892. Pictured below
* The Sallie Robinson was a steamship sailing out of Shreveport and New Orleans, mostly to points west along the Louisiana Coast and Texas, which was commandeered by Union troops for the blockade of the the Port of New Orleans beginning 19 April 1861. It then sailed up and down the Mississippi river picking up passengers like Richard Chittenden.
* Fort Pillow, at Henning Tennessee, was the sight of a bloody battle fought on 12 April 1864. The battle ended with a massacre of African-American Union soldiers who had surrendered to Confederate forces under the direction of Confederate Major General Nathan Bedford Forrest.
The New York Times reported on April 24, 1864 "The blacks and their officers were shot down, bayoneted and put to the sword in cold blood... . Out of four hundred negro soldiers only about twenty survive! At least three hundred of them were destroyed after the surrender! This is the statement of the rebel General Chalmers himself to our informant."
This tragedy was used as a rallying cry in the North and helped the resolve of the Union to see the war through to the end.
*The United States Christian Commission was formed 16 Nov 1861 at a convention of delegates from the YMCA held in New York City. "The object of the Commission was to promote the spiritual and temporal welfare of the officers and men of the U.S. army and navy, in co-operation with chaplains and others." Taken from "Report of the United Stated Christian Commission for the Army and Navy: Work and Incidents: 1st annual report: Philadelphia, February 1863"
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