Letter from William Hardy to his wife, Sallie Hardy; 15 October 1864

              Bivouac near Lafayette, Georgia 
Saturday, October 15th, 1864

My Dear Sallie,

Enclosed you will find a note in pencil written on the march, but I failed to get an opportunity to send it off. I write you from this place which is in Walker County, Georgia, twenty-eight miles southwest of Chattanooga. This is the seventeenth day we have been on the march. We have completely flanked Sherman's army, cutting the railroad in several places, capturing Big Shanty, Moore Station, Ackworth, Calhoun, Lilton, Dalton, Mill Creek Gap, and Tunnel Hill. In all, about two thousand prisoners, seven hundred of whom were Negroes (Forty-fourth Tennessee Colored Infantry Regiment) artillery, etc., etc. We left Dalton yesterday and are resting here tonight, twenty-seven miles northwest of Dalton. How long we will stay here I can't tell, or where we are going I can't tell. It is thought, however, we will go on to Tennessee. We are in light marching order, I have brought only one change of clothes with me. We have no tents, sleep out by a big fire. Weather is quite cold for the last five or six days, fair and dry. It is, however, cloudy this evening. Language is inadequate to give you any idea of the barbarism of the enemy in Georgia. It is a perfect desert waste wherever they have been.