Diary of Orrin Brown, Savannah, Georgia
Tuesday–Jan. 10th
It rained considerable this forepart of the night and is still cloudy, this morning we were relieved about 10 AM and started for camp it began to rain when we got within about three miles of camp and the last mile and a half it rained very hard and continued to rain untill 2 or 3 PM we arrived at camp between 1 and 2 PM and we were about as wet as wet could be. We drew rations this PM they consisted of Salt Poark salt Beef Hardtack 2 days and Coffee Sugar Tea Soap and rice and some dryed ground Potatoes about 1/2 pint for three of us. The wind is raising this evening and I am cold and chilly by getting so wet.
The beginning of the Mexican War in 1846 found Lt. Sherman marooned in a recruiting office in Pittsburgh, far from any action. As a career officer, he was none too happy with this, and secured orders for California—not the heart of the conflict, but more of an opportunity than Pennsylvania. After a six month boat ride around Cape Horn, he arrived at Monterey to find the shooting war over there. Things were pretty quiet in his job as quartermaster, other than a brewing rivalry with fellow West Point grad Henry Halleck. Then on a spring day in 1848, Johann Sutter brought in some shiny chunks of rock to the Army post. On 1 January 1850, Sherman left California with dispatches for Army headquarters on the Gold Rush shaking up the soon-to-be full-fledged State.
Read More:
- The Mexican War: 1846-1848 by K. Jack Bauer (Macmillan Publishing, 1974)
- The Age of Gold: The California Gold Rush and the New American Dream (Search and Recover) by H.W. Brands (Doubleday, 2002)
- Fierce Patriot: The Tangled Lives of William Tecumseh Sherman by Robert L. O’Connell (Random House, 2014)
- The March to the Sea and Beyond: Sherman’s Troops in the Savannah and Carolinas Campaigns by Joseph T. Glatthaar (New York University Press, 1985)
- The Memoirs Of General William T. Sherman by W.T. Sherman (Library of America, 1990)
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