Thomas E. Hogg also was frequently with his father—was there when he passed away. I visited General Hogg only once during his illness, some two or three days before his death. I was kept very busy during this time, and owing to a change in our camps I had to ride six or seven miles to see him, and only found one opportunity of doing so. I found him as comfortably situated as could be expected for a soldier away from home, and receiving every necessary attention.
I will state that General Hogg came to us neatly dressed in citizen’s clothes—never having had an opportunity of procuring his uniform, so that in fact he never wore the Confederate gray. He was not wounded, was not under fire of the enemy; neither was his brigade, until the battle of Farmington, which occurred the day that General Hogg died. After his death and after the army was reorganized, “for three years or during the war,” Dr. McDugald,—who afterwards married General Hogg’s daughter,—Dr. I. K. Frazer, Thomas J. Johnson, one of the General’s staff, Thomas E. Hogg, and the ever-faithful Bob all came home, and of course related minutely to the widow, the two daughters, and the three minor boys, John Lewis, and James Stephen, all the circumstances of the sickness, the lamented death and burial of the husband and father, Brigadier-General Joseph Louis Hogg.
Our camp was moved to a point about three miles east of Corinth. Decherd, the quartermaster, resigned and W. F. Rapley was appointed quartermaster by General Cabell. The rate at which our men fell sick was remarkable, as well as appalling, and distressing in the extreme. The water we had to drink was bad, very bad, and the rations none of the best. The former we procured by digging for it; the earth around Corinth being very light and porous, holding water like a sponge. When we first went there the ground was full of water, and by digging a hole two feet deep we could dip up plenty of a mean, milky-looking fluid; but as the season advanced the water sank, so we dug deeper, and continued to go down, until by the latter part of May our water holes were from eight to twelve feet deep, still affording the same miserable water. My horse would not drink a drop of the water the men had to use, and if I failed to ride him to a small running branch some two miles away he would go without drinking. The rations consisted mainly of flour, made into poor camp biscuit, and the most unpalatable pickled beef.