January 4, 1864---A Confederate Kentuckian comes back to the Union

JANUARY 4, 1864:    

President Lincoln pardons Josiah Pillsbury, Auditor of the Confederate State of Kentucky, of treason against the United States. Pillsbury was one of only five State Government officers in Confederate Kentucky. Pillsbury, a well-known and popular man in Lincoln’s State of birth had several high-ranking Union men supporting his petition, and Lincoln had always been of the opinion that treating Kentucky with kid gloves was the linchpin to winning the war. Lincoln issued 324 pardons as President, with only 64 of them relating to service for the Confederacy. Pillsbury’s is one of just 17 pardons for treason that Lincoln issued to a Confederate.

January 3, 1864---"We know not where to get anything more."

JANUARY 3, 1864:    

Julia Johnson Fisher, a housewife living on the south coast of Georgia makes the following entry in her diary, reflecting the straitened circumstances of the average Confederate:

. . .  [T]he three little girls. I am sorry to lose them and they seem equally sorry to go. The sabbaths are so quiet and lonely they weary us . . . The oldest is scarcely ten years of age and very sickly. She told me today that although she could not read and write she can iron and scrub. It is said that she and the next, aged eight, cook, wash, etc. . . . If this war continues long I fear that such will be our fate, the negroes are becoming so scarce. Dianah returned after dinner with her two children--had walked about eight miles in the rain. She brought a hen and a bottle of syrup for Clarence--a Christmas gift . . . There is no cloth to be had and no thread, no yarn--nor anything to do with. Time passes heavily . . .  For three long years the world has been comparatively lost to us. We know nothing of the changes that have taken place during that time. In dress we are just where we were in 1860---for fashion, but rags and wrinkles are more plentiful . . . I have used bedticking---sheets---curtains and the linings of my dresses [for clothing] and now we know not where to get anything more.