Another Long March

While reading Little To Eat And Thin Mud To Drink: Letters, Diaries, and Memoirs from the Red River Campaigns, 1863-1864 (Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 2007) edited by Gary D. Joiner, I noticed yet another example of hard marching by a unit in the trans-Mississippi.

Private Julius Knapp served in the 116^th New York Volunteer Infantry of the 19^th Army Corps, and he noted that on 22 April 1864, his unit started retreating from near Grand Ecore, Louisiana, at approximately midnight. Knapp wrote that the men kept marching without a break until noon when there was a “dinner” break of one hour. Afterwards, the march resumed and continued until the men arrived near the lower crossing of the Cane River at 11:00 pm. According to Private Knapp this made “’a march of forty five miles with out a hours Sleep and only time enough given us to cook our dinner the longest march in one day ever done by the 19^th Army Corps’” (p. 109). The next day the regiment saw action during the battle of Monett’s Ferry.