War Diaries (May 9) (nonfiction)
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Diaries
Sarah Morgan Dawson: May 9, 1862
"All devices, signs, and flags of the Confederacy shall be suppressed." So says Picayune Butler. Good. I devote all my red, white, and blue silk to the manufacture of Confederate flags. As soon as one is confiscated, I make another, until my ribbon is exhausted, when I will sport a duster emblazoned in high colors, "Hurra! for the Bonny blue flag!" Henceforth, I wear one pinned to my bosom - not a duster, but a little flag; the man who says take it off will have to pull it off for himself; the man who dares attempt it - well! a pistol in my pocket fills up the gap. I am capable, too.
This is a dreadful war, to make even the hearts of women so bitter! I hardly know myself these last few weeks. I, who have such a horror of bloodshed, consider even killing in self-defense murder, who cannot wish them the slightest evil, whose only prayer is to have them sent back in peace to their own country, - I talk of killing them! For what else do I wear a pistol and carving-knife? I am afraid I will try them on the first one who says an insolent word to me. Yes, and repent for it ever after in sackcloth and ashes. O! if I was only a man! Then I could don the breeches, and slay them with a will! If some few Southern women were in the ranks, they could set the men an example they would not blush to follow. Pshaw! there are no women here! We are all men!
- Diary of Sarah Morgan Dawson - Confederate civilian, Louisiana
Edward Hill: May 9, 1864
Charged at 6 and carried the enemies line after an awful struggle. Cost many men. A Rebel Col with a brigade advanced to our Colors stretching them and thrusting the shaft(?) we took him prisoner we lost quite a number of good men the Adgt [Jacklin] killed or prisoner. Colestock and Sieger of my Co. each a leg broken. Skirmishing all the day
—Captain Edward Hill, 16th Michigan Infantry (diary)
- Transcription of the Diary of Edward Hill, May 9, 1864 - May 14, 1864
- The Civil War Diary of Captain Edward Hill
William Pitt Chambers: May 9, 1865
I am a soldier no longer.
—William Pitt Chambers, Company "B," 46th Mississippi Infantry (diary)
- Chambers (William Pitt) Diary @ lib.usm.edu
Henry Cushing: May 9, 1915
The St. Paul, once a cruiser herself in the Spanish War, has been hitting it up very fast, so that we are off the Old Head Kinsale an hour earlier than the passengers expected. It is a bright sunny day with just a little sea, and we have passed a destroyer or two, but nothing else.
Most of the passengers were at morning service and I was writing here when Boothby looked in and said I had better come on the forward deck. This I did, but rather wish I had not. We were going through the Lusitania wreckage---had been, indeed, for the past half hour. Steamer chairs, oars, boxes, overturned boats---and bodies. As I came out we passed quite near a collapsible boat which was bottom side up, with the body of a woman and a child floating alongside; they must have been tied to it in some way, else with the easterly wind the boat would have drifted, from them.
All told, I believe some fifteen bodies were counted, and this was only in our immediate lane; the wreckage must have been strewn for some twenty miles or more---we at least were passing through it for considerably over an hour. Once we veered off to get a nearer view of the only boat which was seen to be right side up; but the officers, all of whom were on the bridge scrutinizing everything with their glasses, appeared satisfied and we went back on our course.
That was about all. No, there was something else: a single little trawler a long way off on our port quarter, evidently patrolling for corpses---at a guinea each---on this sunny Sabbath morning.
—Henry Cushing (diary)
George Beck: May 9, 1943
We smuggled two Russian women into the camp today. I stood guard while two men were in the sawdust cellar with them and food was given to them and clothing. I was caught out by the guard and he searched all over for comrades but they got away. Later on I got and got the women through the gate showing them the direction to take, for the guard was coming round again. Latest news from the German wireless “British troops doing well for we have captured the town of Tunis and another. Arrival this week of two new lads to our camp from Munich.
—George Beck,1st Battalion The Duke of Wellington's Regiment, prisoner of war (diary)
In the News
Fiction cross-reference
Nonfiction cross-reference
- George Beck (nonfiction)
- William P. Chambers (nonfiction)
- Henry Cushing (nonfiction)
- Edward Hill (nonfiction)
- War (nonfiction)
- War Diaries (nonfiction)
