Letters of Rev. John W. Alvord

pilot is coming on board. We pay him $ 100 to take us to that city.

Your letters are there of course. After a few days we go up the river to Vicksburg & then I shall part with the General & go by Montgomery to Augusta & down to Savannah and Charleston a-gain—So please direct all your letters to me there Care Gen.l R. Saxton as before. The transfer of the Beaufort Savings Bank, which I could not perfect in the little time we had coming on—takes me that way. After that I shall come home, perhaps over land possibly—not if I can help it, in a ship from Charleston. In the latter case I shall see you first as then there will be no stop in Washington before coming. But will write you from N.O. or Vicksburg—

Love to all as the Sailors are shouting us off—

Affectionately, as ever J. W. Alvord

Write me at once & of every thing to Charleston S.C.—

[letterhead] HEAD QUARTERS, Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands STATE OF LOUISIANA New Orleans, 1865.

[in pen] Vicksburg Nov 15.

My Dears

You see I keep writing—digging away at work, trying to get along rapidly, & yet moving slowly after all. Mr Hewitt does not come down yet from Memphis—I shall wait for him until 5^oC today & then drop below as far as Natches, waiting for him there. Of course, as you saw from my last Mr. Warren —Savage, & Ray are with me. It has been raining, & is now very muddy—The first mud seen since starting —The coast of the Atlantic being only sand, except the river bottoms quite back in the Alleghanies, & of course dry.

I came back here from Jackson—The General going on by rail to Memphis—Addressed a Reg.^t of Col.^d soldiers before starting on my bank project very enthusiastically received—& have had a great meeting of Col.^d people here—All are very anxious for a Bank. The cotton crop is good & the negroes who have been cultivating it largely are now receiving their money for the crops. These lands being taken from them by the recent order of the President they will have

no other such chance for money, & are disposed to save what they have. They look ahead just like other folks.

Mr Warren is quite enthusiastic. He has never seen these things before, negroes—cotton— schools—rebels in their subjugated glory, and he is at this moment stuffing his gaping valise with specimen of whatever a valise will contain—Mr. W. is evidently to have a museum. He & Mr Savage are just in from a tour of a few hours to Davis Bend. Jeff.^s plantation &c &c. Do you want any garlic from his garden, or negroes toe nails—furniture from the gopher holes of the besieged Vicksburg—bullets, flowers, leaves, pebbles, or other curiosities of intrinsic or associated value? You will look for articles now in the Tract Journal of great interest. However Mr. W. does really seem to be waking up to some things which he had not thought of before. This meeting here away is quite providential—I am quite ^very well this morning. The rest in the rain of yesterday has quite refreshed me. My clothes a little tattered, shirts [tender?]—stockings wollen one pair only, & so of flannels—But expect to get on in some way as I have often done in the field before.

Dont expect me now till I come, in—my plans of rapid return are broken up by this avalanch of